Did this ever happen to you?

You turn on your computer and Windows stays with the splash screen and won't boot up. What could be the cause? There are quite a few issues that would not allow Windows to boot. In this post we will examine those issues and give you tips on how to determine what is wrong.
The first thing you need to consider is when was the last time your computer booted into windows normally? What were you doing? Did you download anything? These are all factors to determine when the problem occurred and why. Sometimes things just happen and hardware can malfunction from one minute to the next.

Since we are dealing with electronic components they don't need an excuse to stop working.

The first step to take when determining what is wrong is to try and boot into safe mode. If your computer will boot into safe mode than most likely you have a hardware conflict or bad board. If you installed an add on board or changed any hardware recently this would be a good place to start.Before you start removing boards you should go into device manager while in safe mode. Click start/control panel/system/hardware/device manager if your running XP. Check to see you have any conflicts or splats. If you do remove them and try to boot into normal mode. Many times this will fix the problem. If it boots normally than the problem is solved. If you see nothing abnormal in device manager than you can try reverting back to a restore point that you know your computer was working normally. Sometimes doing a restore will solve many problems that have occurred.

If you still cannot boot into normal mode than you will need to remove boards one at a time and booting after each time. If at any time you boot normally than you have found your culprit. Don't rule out mice and keyboards they can also cause computers not to boot properly. The best way to rule them out is to unplug them and than try to boot.