Can't boot into XP

[lost-and-found]

I have, what I consider, a serious problem. My windows XP installation is less than a week old. I installed last friday after formatting everything etc. Since then, almost every day when I first turn the PC back on after the night, I have trouble booting into windows XP. I installed all the critical updates, etc. My regular boot process lasts around 15-20 seconds of watching the black logo screen with the scrolling blue bar. However, when the problem arizes, the screen is there for many minutes...like 5, with the HDD light on constantly and the blue bar scrolling. I have no idea what's causing it. I can't even get into safe mode at that time, it takes about five to six reboots to finally boot it again. Now, after I reboot, it only takes 20 seconds to reboot back to working order....and even when I shut it down and turn it back on after a few minutes it boots normally. but for some reason when I shut it down for the night and turn it back on the next day the problem usually arizes. What could be causing it? It's been happening even on the second day after reinstalling. I ran bootviz but for some reason it tells me that the reports it makes don't contain any hard drives so they are therefore not valid....

Here's my stats:

windows xp pro w/ sp 1, 1.2ghz athlon, asus a7a mobo, 384mb ram, 80gb 7200rpm 8mb WD drive,.

Can someone tell me what's up?

[Sixpac_XP]

Have you checked out your power supply? Is it old? How many watts does it put out?

[lost-and-found]

it's a 250w PSU...I know peeps say this is too little, but I've been running on it for the last 3 years w/o a problem in win 98se

[lost-and-found]

for a while I was suspecting that maybe windows had problems after the date change...from the shut down date to the start date...but I tested stuff out and it wouldn't boot wrongly, so that's out of the question.

I also have another graphics card in the system, it's a pci card that I used for a few days as a dual monitor setup, but thenI disabled it in the hardware thingie. could that be causing it to hang sometimes????

[VHockey86]

Well... pull the card and see if it helps, obviously it cant hurt anything to try it.

[lost-and-found]

hmmm, still takes long to boot after shutdown...but not after all shutdowns, it's just randmon

[bailey]

that small of a powersupply will cause problems with xp.
it may have been ok with w98 but I would not even try to run it with xp.

xp has a lot more things going on in the background and will tax the power supply to its limits. I would suggest your getting a 300 or 350 supply of good quality and your problems will go away

[lost-and-found]

would the PSU seriously have an effect on the random slow boot speed? I can see where it could cause crashes, but seriously slow down my boot time at random?

[lost-and-found]

ok, bought a 400w PSU, and still having problems . Still takes long to boot during random times.

[jmichna]

How old is the motherboard? Check out the condition of the capacitors (located near the CPU socket). Do see any signs of leakage/crust or bulging?