Start up help needed

[Cantrell69]

About a week ago my computer started not booting properly. The problem is when I power on my pc, I see the screen that says HP Invent but most of the time it freezes on this screen. Windows will not boot and I'm not able to access the bios by pressing F1. It's just like it doesn't have the power to do anything!! When it does manage to actually boot windows and I log in and at my desktop, more problems occur. For a little while my CPU has spikes and the power to 100% usage when I'm not running any program and everything freezes for a few seconds. I am really thinking it's some sort of power issue caused by a failing power supply. Also, when I run programs that use a decent amount or power such as video games, my computer usually freezes and I have to manually turn it off. If anyone has any ideas what could be making my computer do this, I would appreciate it.

[GX1_Man]

Have a read here:

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1133458168

and here:

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1134123580

Post back with what you find.  

[Cantrell69]

Those are helpful tips but Ive already checked and done most of those. I always update my anti virus scanner and ad-aware so those things should not be a problem. I do not think my cpu fan or any other fans are overheating. Heres some more info. I've read my error logs so I could see what my problems were and it seems like I'm having a total system failure whenever it won't boot. I've taken my HDD off and installed it on my brothers computer but it's working fine. The only thing I can think of is that my cousin wanted to test a stick of RAM a day or two before these things started happening. His stick worked and I took it out and put mine back in and it was recognized and all was fine. I've heard that sometimes that could cause problems but I think you have to fix that in BIOS? And most of the time my computer won't respond when I try to access them. I will try the software for checking RAM in one of those links and see it that finds anything.

[GX1_Man]

I would remove the RAM and make sure it is seated correctly first!  

<<His stick worked and I took it out and put mine back in and it was recognized and all was fine. I've heard that sometimes that could cause problems but I think you have to fix that in BIOS? >>

Were you properly grounded before playing with the RAM? Static electricity can do strange things. This info and the working inside the case probably needed to go in the first post by the way.

Does the BIOS recognize the RAM correctly?

[Cantrell69]

I always ground myself by touching the frame of the case before doing any work inside the computer. I don't know if my cousin was grounded as he was the one who put it in and I was very weary about that. And his stick of RAM came from an old computer than doesn't work. I was in the BIOS a couples of days ago when this started and the the RAM was detected there. I've scanned my pc with PC Doctor and I know that may not be the most reliable program but everything on my pc is in good shape. From the way it is acting I first started thinking that I had a memory leak or my motherboard was going bad because one error report said something about the registry wasn't functioning properly. Is there a way to get into the BIOS without turning off my computer and re-booting? Then I might can see what's going on because if I cut it off, it probably won't work again for a while.

[GX1_Man]

You can only access the BIOS while booting.  The registry has nothing to do with any RAM problem.

How about some details of the machine, the operating system, etc?

I sense there is something else not being told. Were you working in there before the problems started, (and if so, why) or did this all start after your advennture? Let's  be clear about what happened first.

[Cantrell69]

The RAM exchanging was the last recent hardware changes that I did on my computer and aftre I did that, there was no problems occurring. The day after or two day after, I started my computer up in the morning and everything seemed perfectly fine and I played a video game and after about five minutes it crashed and I opened task manager to close it but then it froze too and my desktop icons were gone so I had to manually turn my computer off. I use Windows XP home edition and my motherboard and processor is AMD and it's running at 2ghz. I have 736 mb or ram. Anyway aftre that I tried turning my computer on and it didn't get past the HP splash screen while it was supposed to be booting but never did.  I then started waiting for a few hours and would try to turn it on again and sometimes it would work like that. But my computer wouldn't recognize the hardware and other things that are installed. It's kind of wierd but as like right now when it's working, I can do small things like going online or viewing my documents and such. If I start a program that uses medium to a good bit of processing power, then my computer will freeze and I won't be able to do anything. Which made me think that it could be my processor but it's supposedly good. I remember going online yesterday and used a ram monitoring program and that said that I used 20% of what ram I had for a few minutes online. Now that was some serious power consumption!! Today when my computer was running, my cd rom was recognized and after a few minutes it somehow wasn't there.  So there is all sorts of bad things happening. Oh and another wierd thing is that when I turn on my computer, obviously the cd rom will turn on since it's a top priority but I've noticed that it would still run even when my computer didn't even recognize the cd rom. So I don't know what caused that.