My IBM laptop won't (the vast majority of times) boot windows xp properly. The loading bar runs accross the screen for about ten seconds then freezes and won't do anything, even shut down - I am forced to disconnect all power to the laptop to turn it off. On the rare occassion it fuly boots to windows it freezes within a matter of minutes.

Strangely though it works perfectly in all safe modes, which would be fine but for the lack of sound and applications.

Chris, February 2007

The safe mode does not load any of the memory or video managers. Restart, hit F8, and do a logged boot or similar. What you want to do is watch it boot every driver, etc...when it hangs on one, you'll know what the problem is. 9 times out of 10 its memory or video problem. Did you recently install a program or device, PCMCIA card, USB, etc?

Tony, March 2007