Recently on a 2 year old Dell 3000 the system would lock up on this "Windows is Starting" screen forever. Safe Mode (with Networking) worked OK. Running Windows XP SP2 with current updates.
An external hard drive using usb2.0 was recently connected but all the usb ports were 1.x. Hence on startup, the system got to recognize the new drive but would go no further. Solution, for now, is to disconnect the external drive and power up the system; then reconnect the hard drive and all is well. This is the solution suggested by PremiumComputerSupport.com after 3+ hours of work.
Now the hard drive had been installed over a month ago and there have been power cycles of the cpu since then without incident.
We can, of course, add a 2.0 usb card to the computer (and will) but does anyone have any thoughts on this one?
Dan