Need help

[soup_nazi]

I have a Compaq Deskpro, celeron 500, 196 mb ram, and i just recently installed a new hdd. I installed win xp pro, and everything went smoothly. Windows installed beautifully, and it ran very smoothly (for a 500). However, I did all the windows updates, including SP2, and after it rebooted itself after the install, it gets past the Compaq splash screen, then a cursor comes up and there it sits. It will not boot. Anyone ever have this problem?

[HeadBand]

did the system have sp1 at first?
is this a usb mouse?

i had a problem like this when i first upgraded to sp1, it has generic usb drivers so you need to uninstall your old ones first, i believe i just went into safemode to uninstall them but its been a while

[haycs0]

try safe mode and do a system restore

[pphalan]

I had a problem with the sp2 locking up my system and started over up to sp1 and my computer hasn't had a problem since.One update had a driver for my GeForce card that would freeze the screen.Since then I try each update by itself before I add the next one.

[soup_nazi]

I've never worked on Compaqs before, how do you boot into safe mode on this stupid thing?

[HeadBand]

press f8 repetitivley when you first boot, it should go to a menu just before the windows loading screen

its the same on any windows pc

[soup_nazi]

Thanks, I'll try that.

Edit: It just kicks me back to the damned cursor and that's it. I can't boot into safe mode, I can't boot from my windows cd, nothing.

[truckpuller]

He may be having a memory issue if he's only got 196meg of ram . XP with service pack 2 is power hungry i think they recommend at least 256.

Just my 2 cents

[soup_nazi]

I installed more RAM, and now it doesn't recognize the new 256 MB stick. What's the problem here?

[pphalan]

The clue is in your 1st post return to were it opperated fine then carefully add your updates.XPsp2 has known issues with older sofware and hardware.