Boot fails--at end of splash screen

[Guest jt3]

Need some ideas.

 

XP Pro (OEM) SP2 rebooted after applying June updates, and then downloading

July's--some suggestion of a problem when unable to properly disable

Spybot's TeaTimer, just before.

 

Upon restart, goes through splash screen, possibly for the usual length of

time, but screen goes black, everything else unresponsive, save for reset.

 

BIOS interface suggests everything normal, except, perhaps, CPU temp--40 deg

C (Athlon 64 3200, Gigabyte GA K8NS pro mbd, WD 74G Raptor SATA boot drive,

250 G SATA Maxtor storage drive) but that's not high enough, considering

ambient is around 80 deg F, to be likely the problem.

 

Upon attempted reboot, XP recognizes bad shutdown has occurred, suggests due

to hardware changes (there were none), gives options to start normally, safe

mode, last known good config, etc. Choosing any of these brings exactly the

same result.

 

Never got around to setting up a Knoppix disc, though clearly I should have.

This thing has been an absolute pain from the start--bad caps on mbd, RMA'd,

power supply flakiness, but seemed to have finally settled down for the last

six months. No doubt it was merely waiting for me to stop expecting it to

shoot the cat.

 

Thanks for any suggestions,

Joe