Win XP stops loading after black background load screen

When booting (or rebooting) my computer, Windows XP Pro stops loading after the screen where it displays the Win XP logo on a back background with the blue load bar. The screen goes black and sometimes there's a white line that will flicker on and off really quickly. I'm not sure what's been causing this, the only thing I've installed lately that I can think of is iTunes, but I doubt that would cause such a problem.

When it freezes, and I try to reboot again, it'll take me to the screen where I choose between the different safe modes, last known good configuration, or starting normally. Last known good configuration has the same freezing problem. I've booted into safe mode and tried a system restore, to a date before I recall having the problem, but it after waiting for the whole process, it says that the system restore failed. I've also tried using the recovery console and running a chkdsk /r after /p had found problems. However, this did not alleviate the problem. The weird thing is that sometimes the computer will boot normally without a problem, but maybe 4 out of 5 times it'll have this problem.

I'll note that maybe one or two times after booting into safe mode, a message came up about the display driver failing to draw something. I got a new LCD monitor about a month ago, but it went weeks without this problem. I tried downloading and reinstalling the monitor drivers anyway, but this didn't work either.

I'm not sure what to do here, any suggestions?

 

That you can boot to safe mode, but not normal makes me suspect a driver or software issue. Something which loads in windows normal mode, but not safe mode is not loading and windows is sitting there waiting for it.

If you recently removed a virus it could be there is still an entry calling for it.
If you installed a game or graphics software, it could be your graphics settings were changed to something non supported.
If there were storms it could be that a modem or nic got damaged.

I would start with booting to safe mode, and going to start / run and type msconfig
Choose the selective startup and uncheck the three boxes for system.ini,
sustem services and startup items.
Apply and reboot. See if you can boot to windows normal.
If so, then return the checks, one at a time until you identify the file with the problem.
Then you go into that tab and uncheck everything and add them back one at a time until you find the problem.

 

Thanks for the insight.

I got these errors occassionally (but not every time) after booting into safe mode:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jchien/img/displayerror.png
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jchien/img/displayerror2.png
And it pointed toward the display drivers.

I managed to update them, and I think everything's working okay now.