I am having a problem with startup using a Dell Dimension 8100 I got from a friend, which I believe XP was manually installed on. The bios runs as expected, and the XP logo screen begins to appear, but it stops before it is done fading in, the progress bar does not move, and Windows does not start. I have tried restarting and running in the different safe mode options. In safe mode, it runs very quickly through a list of file addresses (all in the Windows folder, I think) and stops at "windows/system32/drivers/agp440.sys" (give or take some caps lock). It doesn't seem to be doing anything at all after it stops at that file, or when it freezes at the XP logo, even when I leave it all day, and there are no error messages or signs that it is interrupted by anything at all.

 

I have recently installed a game called "Tribes: Vengance", which came with a DirectX 9.0c update. Installing that update and rebooting was the last thing I did before this started happening, but I don't think that is the problem, because it has happened long before I installed anything major on the computer myself. (It mysteriously started working again before I could figure out what the problem was the first time.)

 

Does anyone know how I can fix or get around this problem?