Tom writes in with a hardware question.
Q. I just installed a new HD, after a few days of it working, the computer starts, the bios detects the drives and does a memory test, it is all ok, then the windows XP screen starts up and I see the three dot marquis scrolling across the screen, then for an instant I get a blue screen of death, then it goes blank and restarts. How can I get the display to hold the blue screen longer so I can read the error message before all goes blank and restarts?
A. I would start by removing the new hard drive to see if you can get the computer to boot again. If you can then you can check the Event Viewer for any error details to try and narrow down why it doesn't like the new drive.
Then you can prevent the computer from automatically restarting on the blue screen error by right clicking on My Computer and selecting Properties. Then click on the Advanced tab and then the Startup and Recovery Settings button and uncheck the box that says Automatically restart. The next time you reboot, it should stop on the Blue Screen so you can read what it says.
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