Hi there, I'm in a real wierd situation with my Windows XP.. Suddenly, I just can't start my computer in normal mode. It freezes at "Reading personal settings" screen and never goes further. It can start however in Safe Mode. I scanned for viruses and spyware with Norton Antivrus and Adaware but nothing was found. I ran System Mechanic's tools and it didn't find anything wrong! So I don't understand where the problem is.. Should I use the Windows XP installation CD to solve the problem? How do I do that..? Thanx.
More than likely you somehow corrupted your windows files and when your HDD goes to access those corrupted files it fails to boot... Only solution...back up everything that you want to keep and reformate it
If you are still having problem - you can find some nice utilities here. There is a windows boot disc - download, burn to cd and boot computer from disc - run chkdisc and it has fixed boot files, registry entries for me. http://www.bootdisk.com/
Well, I had to reinstal Xp... Only to find myself in the same situation! So I know now what the cause is: a conflict between Norton Antivirus 2009 and Zone Alarm 7. Yes good people, the smart guys from Symantec made their new NAV so that you are unable to have Zone Alarm up and working... I didn't know that, as NAV2008 and ZA worked fine together... but if you do some Google search you can find that everybody has the same problem with NAV2009. That's how you get to hate Symantec.
Hi ranger2 Both NAV and ZA are heavy weight software that bog up your system. For NAV, I recommend Antivir as an alternative, which has better detection rates, much lesser resource hogging, and is free as well. As for ZA, I recoommend Comodo to replace it, for all the same reasons. Best Regards