Windows startup issues (XP Home)

[Superted]

Hello,

I'm in a bit of a predicament at the moment. My pc has been running fine until recently, when start up has suddenly become very strange.

(Windows xp home, ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe, AMD Athlon 3000+, gf4 ti4400, 1GB RAM)
When i boot up my pc the first time it shows white lines on the screen, this is the same on the first restart. The second restart it gets to the windows screen and hangs. On the third restart the windows screen either hangs or takes a very very long time to start windows. I have no idea whats cause this and any ideas are appreciated. I would prefer not to format if possible but as a last resort i can do this (next time i will set up damn partitions!).

I found in my device manager under system devices something called 'Microcode Update Device' with this message:

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device

I did a bit of research and discovered its to do with intel which worries me as i run an AMD processor.

 

[Trotter]

Delete it and see if it stays gone.

 

[Superted]

Any other ideas? I dont really want to just delete it incase it breaks something.

 

[office politics]

white lines? remove video driver, shutdown, reseat video card, boot up, let pnp reinstall driver

 

[Superted]

The white lines have gone now after just reseating the card but the beeping still continues and it has trouble detecting my SATA HDD at startup. Im beggining to wonder if its something to do with the hdd itself.

 

[office politics]

beeping? beeping is bad. check you motherboard documentation for post beep codes.

how many beeps, we can prolly tell you what it is by that

 

[Superted]

It beeps constantly at start up until about the 4th restart and occasionaly beeps during normal running. When it beeps during running it tends to hang for a second then return to normal.

 

[office politics]

typically constant beeping means a key is being held down. first id check my keyboard.

otherwise, it really sounds like bad hardware, try swapping out what you can. i'd prolly start with memory, maybe the ide devices, after that it could be the mobo.

 

[Superted]

thx for the help i will try it tomorrow

 

[Superted]

After taking the disk to a friends place ive found that the hdd itself is perfectly fine. RAM is fine after testing that too.

I installed windows on a seperate drive and it was working fine.
Multicoloured lines went away and have now returned with avengence. Took me 8 restarts to get it working this morning.

Combined with the horrible sound it makes when you plug a SATA drive in im fearing it might be a mobo problem? I have revision 1.01 of the asus 7n8xe-deluxe board. Ive seen some people have had problems with it.