I'm in Win XP Safe Mode (w-networking) posting this. Win XP SP3 will not start in Normal Mode.
In my quest to decide if there was any way to keep my old, terribly memory-resource constrained 2004 17" Toshiba laptop computer, with only 1.5GB of mem (max 2.0) -- even though MS is discontinuing XP service soon -- I bought an extra 1GB of memory, removed the old 512 MB module and installed the 1GB component, to give me 2.0 GB. Hoped this would help the terrible performance, virtual-memory "paging," and heavy disk traffic that slows my computer to a crawl, as it is now, on the Web (Firefox, etc).
Everything seemed OK on the memory addition. I've done this before on other computers and was careful to "ground" myself to remove static electricity before handling these memory units. But when I turned the computer power ON, nothing happened. No start screen for Windows. Nuthin'.
So, I dug back into the memory compartment, and sure enough, one of the modules was not seated properly. Fixed that and powered up again. The Win start screen comes up, but then a full-screen of blue text is displayed. No way to read it, or pause it....but says something about Page File, etc, and contact Administrator, etc.
Then there is a lot of HDD traffic, but Windows never starts. Just a blank/black screen.
I started in Safe Mode, to check that the system was seeing all the memory. Yep. Shows 2.0GB. Then I tried a Win System Restore to my nightly Restore Point from last night. That worked OK, on SR. But still the same problem with Windows. Nothing starts.
Then, I tried GHOST 15 using my external HDD (F) Recovery Point -- for the entire C-drive, that I did just this morning. Had to use the GHOST CD to start a "Recover My Computer" option. That worked fine. Took about 30-minutes. But, even after this, still no Windows start (although no Blue Screen now, and other things seemed better behaved).
Every time, in this weird Win start mode, I get a screen-full of "zeroes" -- usually row after row, but sometimes just a scroll of a single column of zeroes -- right after the Blue Screen, then the Win start screen comes up. Then the screen goes blank and stays that way.
Have tried other "F8" options, like "go back to last known good Win start point." Nada.
Anyone have some thoughts on what I can do to get Normal Windows back? Appreciate the help.