My Windoze PCs like to hang together.. as in stop #Windows XP

It all started with a dead monitor before Christmas. So I swapped it out with a spare good one. Then XP PC number 1 started to have some hard drive errors (and was getting a bit slower anyway and needed to be freshened), so it got put upstairs to be cleaned up, where it would replace an older XP box that was in an even worse state. The kids would actually think it was quick compared to their usual machine. Meanwhile a brand new (and fast) no-name XP box took up prime position downstairs, so I was happy.

When the dead monitor came back to life (after a bit of tinkering), the kids got that too. But then the real fun started. The really old nail refused to start again in its new position, so it got put aside. Fine. But now the usually reliable PC number 1 also disliked its new upstairs home and after a few days refused to start. Well, it would start and hang whilst loading mup.sys, or so I learned from Safe Mode. Taking a quick break from real work, today I got 'stuck in' to both problems.

The old nail just beeped at me - no video at all. So everything (meaning all USB and Firewire connections) came off the back and I swapped in 'guaranteed' safe bets like a new keyboard and mouse I had handy. When that didn't work I unplugged the monitor. It was still beeping and hanging. So I took the lid off and reseated everything, especially the RAM and the video card that sat in the PCI slot. Bingo, we had Windoze again! But shortly after displaying the Windoze welcome it auto-rebooted itself. And repeat, ad nauseum. Having checked for silly wiring issues, I resorted to the Windows XP master disc and the Recovery Console.

But first I had to get the Recovery Console to run. It would start fine, but kept hanging at "Starting Windows...". Fearing my life was being sucked out of my body by this machine, I went over to old reliable and started the same process. And lo it came to pass that it too got stuck "Starting Windows" (you'll recall it was hanging when loading mup.sys, more than likely indicating (a) the power supply failing to meet requirements; (b) a hard drive error in a bad spot, like ontop of a driver or related registry entry or (c) a hardware failure somewhere else. Vague, I know). So I started pulling wires to lessen the load on the power supply and remove some of the suspects. No dice, although I noticed there was (shockingly) more than 5V coming out of the Epson printer's USB cable... hmmm - a related issue? Anyway, having disconnected whatever I could, I went into the BIOS and started disabling everything 'likely', one by one. I did this on both machines and the old nail finally woke up and went into recovery. I started chkdsk /p /r before it changed its mind and went back to old reliable for more fun.

Reseating the RAM and generally checking everything (and cleaning the fan) seemed to do the trick and I repeated the chkdsk task...

I don't know if I've fixed anything yet, but at least I have had an adventure!