Thinkpads Forum

Hello everyone. I hope this is in the right forum.

I have a T21 running Windows 2000 that is hanging on the startup screen. The blue bars only go about two-thirds of the way, then everything just stops. It will boot into the BIOS set-up utility and Safe Mode just fine. If anyone has any ideas on how to get this computer up and running again, I would love to hear them. Thanks.

Have you tried running any kind of AV or Anti-spyware programs while in safe mode?

Did you make any changes to your system prior to the hanging problem?

you could try making a boot floppy, if you have a floppy drive, i don't know that much about your model, but if you can get these files: NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR, boot.ini, copy them to a floppy and start the computer. These files are also in XP if you can't find a 2K machine. If you can boot into windows you may be able to find the problem. But like tfflivemb2 said you should check for virus in safe mode.

Yes, I have run all of the following in Safe Mode: Ad-Aware, Spybot, Ewido and AVG. All show totally clean. I haven't made any major changes recently to my system. The only thing I can think of is that right before it first started to hang, I shut down via the Power button instead of clicking
Shutdown. I was having a problem getting a decent Internet speed. After the tenth time in a row of seeing " connected at 14.4 kbps" instead of my usual 45.3, I said F-this and slammed my finger down on the button.
I've shut computers down that way many times in the past and never had any problems, so I doubt that's it. Anyway, thanks for the replies and keep 'em coming.

Try booting up in Safe Mode and running System File Checker. I think it works the same way in W2K as in XP. Type SFC /scannow in the run box and hit Enter.

In Safe Mode: try setting the display to VGA mode; try disabling devices in device manager. Reboot and see what happens. If you can boot up normally, then start reenabling devices again to find out which one is the culprit.

Boot up PC-Doctor for DOS and run diagnostics. PC Doctor for DOS bootable CD - ThinkPad General

When you say you can get into Safe Mode, I bet you mean Safe Mode without networking support, right? If you try it with networking support, it hangs - right?

Remove the battery and AC power, open the little door on the bottom, remove, and then reinstall the mini-PCI card. My T20 used to do that a couple times a year, reseating the card always fixed it.

If that doesn't work, boot into Safe Mode and remove the video driver, set the display to Standard VGA. Boot back into Windows and reinstall the video driver.

Ed Gibbs

I believe there is also a way to hide the gui loading screen so you can read what driver/file it fails on. Wish I knew for sure.

The link to PC Doctor for a T21 is http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4YZM3F

The link provided above is for T30, T4X, etc

Thanks everyone for the replies.

I guess a couple of days off cured the computer of whatever was ailing it. I was going to go into Safe Mode and disable everything, but while I was powering on I got distracted and missed my chance to hit F8, and it booted right up! Maybe the problem was heat related, I have no clue.