Yesterday I paid one of my somewhat irregular visits to the Windows Update site and installed the following recommended updates:KB901214KB890830KB903235KB898461A reboot was necessary to complete the installation, at which point the problem surfaced. The system would not reboot! In fact trying a reset and even a cold boot produced the same result every time: the bios appeared to detect the floppy and optical drives before the boot stopped. No beeps, no graphic card detection, no text on the monitor screen, nada.So, the cover came off, checked the fans were all working and reseated the graphics card. The system then rebooted all the way into Windows. System temps were as before and stable. Stressed the graphics card with Aquamark3 and the score was consistent with previous benchmarking at 36,238. Sigh of relief that, sadly, was short lived. I then tried a system Restart, Windows appeared to shutdown but the reboot failed as before! Ugh!! I then switched off and left it alone for 10 minutes and tried again...success!By this time I was starting to suspect the recent Windows Update installation so carried out a System Restore to the previous day and all has been well since.This is a new one to me so would be interested to hear of any ideas as to what may have happened. It's been my experience in the past that when there is a problem detecting the GPU the MB lets you know with a series of beeps. Why none on this occasion? Why should a security update affect system boot behaviour. Just doesn't make sense and I hate uncertainties. :( MikeP4 2.4GHz (400FSB), 1Gig PC2100 DDR Crucial, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (Omega 2.6.42 / Catalyst 5.6), SB Audigy (5.12.0001.0443), Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" TFT LCD 20ms Monitor (1280x1024x32), Gigabyte GA-8IRXP MoBo, Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 (160GB) + IBM Deskstar 120GXP UDMA100 (40 GB), Ultra-Quiet PSU 400W, WinXP Home (SP2), DirectX 9.0c, AGP Aperture = 128MB

Hi Mike, sorry to hear about your troubles. To be frank, I have a hard time believing software updates would provoke a system to behave so strangely. Maybe it's a coincidence and RAM module or something alike said goodbye too? Have other Windows-Update 'clients' been facing similar experiences? If this is not the case, I'ld start looking towards components such as RAM, PSU, HDs etc. There's another known issue with ICH5 mainboards (to a lesser degree with ICH4 AFAIK) which concerns the USB part of the southbridge. I don't know much about this affair (apparently due to voltage surges) but it can lead to needing a mobo replacement. Let's hope it's something less dramatic! Good luck to you and kind regards Jaap

I select Automatic Updates and I've never had any problems. How did you decide on the three updates you listed? On my PC, in Add/Remove Programs the order of installation seems to be:901214898461903235I haven't got 890830 and there's a lot more you didn't list.Do they need to be installed in this order?Have you got SP2?EDIT:I've looked in the WINDOWS folder and there is a log file for KB90124 (amongst others). The date in this log file is yesterdays when I updated with KB903235. This suggests that KB90124 may be used when adding further updates so might be needed first.

Hi Jaap,Thanks for your input. I do hear what you are saying yet here I am a full 24 hours since it happened and the system appears fine. I have performed several cold and warm boots throughout the day and experienced no problems whatsoever. Stability rules once again and, it seems, was reinstated following that System Restore.Like you I too have difficulty believing that a software update could throw a spanner in the works at boot time and at such an early phase in the boot process. However, I remember all too well that incident following the installation of SP2 and InCD from Nero prevented my system from entering SAFE mode. I reported the problem and, it turned out, I was not alone. An update was released soon thereafter and normal behaviour was quickly restored.When I look at the chain of events I could be persuaded that this was attributable to overheating yet the idling CPU temp sits at 47 degrees C and doesn't shift much from that reading until I exercise the GPU. The highest temp reached is 57 degrees (as it is now with FS9 running) but depending on the room ambient this is often a couple of degrees lower.This is a strange one, to be sure.Best regards,Mike

Hi,I decided to reinstall these security updates one at a time and perform a reboot immediately following each installation. All went well and the order I now have in Add/Remove programs is:903235 - IE JView Profiler Security Update901214 - Colour Management Module Security Update898461 - New Packaging Module for future updating (if I recall correctly)For the moment, I think I'll quit while I'm ahead and pass on KB890830 (MS's Malicious Software Tool). I could well be wrong, but I have this (irrational I know) gut feeling that this is somehow implicated. I might try installing it on some future occasion, but I ain't about to rock the boat when there really is no good reason at present.The reason why I didn't list any more is that barring the 4 mentioned in my post I was already up to date. And yes, I do have SP2 installed.Mike

Hmmm... Another Gigabyte with boot problems...!George DorkofikisAthens, Greecehttp://online.vatsimindicators.net/811520/1704.pnghttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/betaimg.jpg

I'd forgotten what KB890830 was. I removed that some time ago because it seemed to generate error reports to MS whenever I booted - I think they were about problems with the fax drivers but don't quote me.

You're lucky you got your system back up and running. I have never had a hard drive failure in my 15 plus years of computing with various systems. I did a couple of weeks ago on a less than one year old Dell Generation 3 system. Had the Raid(0) volume config so lost everything. Last backup was about 10 months ago. Yikes! Never thought the drive would crash so fast. After I got a free replacement drive from Dell I got rid of all Raid configs and went back to ATA/IDE configuration. Now, if the hard drive fails I'll be able to reinstall Windows and recover the important files.In your case, have you looked in the Administrative Tools/Event Viewer yet? When a system crashes it usually records what happened and sometimes even makes a recommendation on the fix. You might even see an error msg and "google" it. Hope this helps you some.Remember to backup your important files....Jim

I've seen this many times, have you gone back to ms update to see if there are updates to the updates to the updates? (boy how I love windows)

Hi Mike, that's good news a good ol' old fashion system restore put you back into business. Thanks for the feedback. What made me think it might be 'something hardware' was the sys not even booting/beeping. On a sidenote and talking about peculiar Windows updates, the recent post-sp4 win2000 rollup-pack#1 (891861) makes the CPU no longer enter the idle-mode (halt-mode) and causes such systems to constantly run at max CPU temperature (even though the CPU-load is next to nothing without any apps running!). Technically it signifies that i.e. P4 boxes use ca. 30-40W more energy. Non-stop... I'm not sure whether the proposed fix (replacing the HAL.dll which one needs to backup before installing the RU-pack) is the solution as both files (pre- and post-update) are absolutely identical. Best of all and AFAIK, one third of the corporate computers still run win2k. If many sys-admins installed this one in good faith... What's 'evil', is, this error is hard to detect and one will only notice by monitoring temperatures or measuring the electrical flow. Thanks, good luck and kind regards Jaap

Hi George,"Hmmm... Another Gigabyte with boot problems...!".....hey, That's perhaps a bit unfair. On the other hand maybe your comment could be applied to newer boards, I don't know. I have had two Gigabyte boards and both proved to be rock solid.Regards,mike

Hi Jim,"In your case, have you looked in the Administrative Tools/Event Viewer yet? When a system crashes it usually records what happened and sometimes even makes a recommendation on the fix. You might even see an error msg and "google" it. Hope this helps you some.".....I've looked at the entries and see nothing untoward. In any case, can errors be recorded at such an early stage during system boot?On the subject of hard drive failure I thought I was a victim a few weeks ago, but it turned out to be my own fault :( A couple of weeks prior to the "failure" I had opened the lid to give the innards a general spring clean. In doing so I had neglected to check all the leads and discovered that the molex power connecter was not fully pushed home in my primary drive. The system couldn't detect the drive and consequently the boot failed. I hadn't carried out a full system backup for a month and in the interim had made quite a few changes. So, for a while, I felt a little uncomfortable until I discovered the cause! It's a wonder it worked at all and I had not suffered any corruption of data. Mike

I won't argue with that... It may be down to the production line or individual units.But on the contrary to you, I had 2 Gigabyte boards that gave me problems!My prior one 887PE with the i845PE chipset which did not boot after I tried to upgrade the RAM from 512MB to 1GB (tried 4 different brands of RAM sticks), and my ex-current one (I changed it due to that), which you will find a whole thread here about the problems that I had! At the end, I changed it to another brand, better quality and had no problems since!George DorkofikisAthens, Greecehttp://online.vatsimindicators.net/811520/1704.pnghttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/betaimg.jpg