I have my Dualcore AMD Acer laptop, 5102Wlmi, with a 120GB hd, 2 GB ram, etc. I had a friend buy it in the states and bring it over just 2 months ago. All of a sudden, the other day when i went to turn it on, it would bring up the xp boot screen, and then just hang there. I tried a different hard drive. no luck. I tired installing XP, but after booting from cd and loading all the drivers, right after the FAT and NTFS drivers, it says "Setup is loading Windows" and then it hangs there. I've left it overnight and in the morning it's still in the same place. I can't reformat, install, or repair my XP installation. SO i took the hard drive and stuck it in another laptop to load XP. It ran fine until i stuck it back in my laptop, after which it crashes with a BSOD whether in safe mode or normal. It seems to crash after loading mup.sys, and back when it would simply freeze, it also got up till that particular driver and then stopped. I've tried loading Ubuntu on it. No problems. It loads and runs perfectly. I've tried Vista Ultimate. It also loads and runs perfectly. Why won't XP work? I can't see how this would be a software issue, so it must be hardware. but what? And it would make sense that Vista has more stringent hardware requirements than XP, so if it was hardware-related, wouldn't Vista have even more trouble than XP?

Did you add new hardware ? For instance, is a huge USB disk plugged on an USB port ?

Hi Grafitti,
I have had a similar issue with sony vaio spg-33 laptop a few year back. It came loaded with windows me. I tried to load windows 2000 Pro. After endless pains, it came up to be a faulty device driver.
I can just advice you to boot on 'safe mode" YOu can do this by pressing on F8 at the start of win XP boot.
you can try to uninstall some devices.. (try guess work.. because nothing else can be done.. I dont think windows has a readable log of its boot time ie like dmesg).

Well.. and the easiest is to have a shiny new OS like Suse-10.2 it rocks and looks more better than windows.

Here's the deal:
no new hardware plugged in, just the default specs it came with
(TurionX2 1.66 Ghz, Ati Radeon 1100 @ 128MB shared memory, 2 GB DDR2 @ 400Mhz, 120GB 5400rpm PATA HDD, DVD-RW multi)
Came pre-loaded with XP Media Center 2005. Typical Acer setup with hidden partition to restore OS in case of crash.
Even at the shop today they weren't able to get it to restore from there.
Obviously i already tried safe mode. it crashes or hangs. i can't get into the recovery console because, as i already said, it sticks at the "loading windows" part. I've tried Winternals Recovery Disk 2005. That hangs too at the XP loading screen. The Acer recovery DVD loads into the ram, but then doesn't boot. I've run memory tests. The RAM is fine.

have you gone in safe mode and done system restore? this will take you back to a chosen time when your laptop was in perfect condition.

If you can get it to load fine in another laptop, it seems like worst has already come to worst. I would have given up by now and stuck it back in the other laptop to back it up and format it. Then put the blank drive back into the original laptop and try installing XP fresh.

Or you can google "ultimate boot cd" I haven't used it, but I'm told it's *enter your diety here*'s gift to geek kind. I have a copy of it, just haven't needed to try it yet

Good Luck!

Hi Graffiti,
I think you need a replacement, some h/w gone wrong somewhere. Also you can retry some live CD, like ubuntu, suse to check up the H/W functioning is proper.
Generally to detect a h/w problem.. load a live CD and work as much as possible try to do all sort of operation.

For most part, was there any Windows update performed during those 2 months?

United States machines are designed to run with United States program--meaning if you have US hardware, it is known that running other language packs for Windows for other programs/updates may lead to memory leak. This can cause to hang the Windows operation or can lead to excessive CPU usage.

Whatever the reason may be I would first try to see if your CPU is running at critical temperature. There's a good chance that the heatsink may have come loose or not making a firm contact. If you are willing to take it apart or leave it to your local computer shop, have them look into proper heatsink placement.

If you want to be sure, you can try to measure the CPU temperature by inserting a thermometer to the venting slot. Try to touch the heatsink as much as you can. I think the tolerant CPU temperature for a laptop is under 147F or 64C on an average. A good heatsink can maintain a CPU temperature of 105F or 40C.

Yes, I have already tried booting in safe mode. it won't.
Yes, I have already tried fresh formatting. i can't.
Yes, I have already tried Ultimate Boot CD. it hangs.
I have also tried Winternals Emergency Disk Commander
I have also tried Ubuntu. It tells me everything is fine.
I have updated Windows. But I'm running the US English version, so no conflicts possible there.
I have checked the CPU. it runs at regular temperature. (@42c)
Any out of the box ideas that I haven't already tried?

Ubunto works, this means that the CPU and the motherboard are OK.
Did you try Ubuntu as full install or as LiveCD ?
If you tried it as LiveCD, I would also try to do a full Ubunto install, using the whole disk. This would tell us that there is also no hard disk problem.
If the installed Ubuntu works, this would mean that you have a faulty hardware part which is neither the cpu nor the disk nor the motherboard, and that this faulty hardware is not used by Ubuntu but is used by Crosoft.
After this full disk Ubuntu install, I would do a disk wipe (With Norton ghost for instance) and I woud try again a full Windows fresh install on a fresh disk.
I hope that the Windows you are installing is exactly the same which already was able to run on this PC (some laptops need special Windows install CD's, mainly because of the LCD display.