My PC freezes durning start-up. When I turn it on it never even gets to the welcome screen, what should I do? (I'm running win-xp) Fortunately, I can start it up in 'safe mode'. Where do I go from there? I tried a system restore, a disk cleanup, and a defrag, but the problem persists! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

It starts in Safe Mode, but doesn't go further? When in Safe Mode run MSCONFIG and uncheck EVERYTHING under Startup. Then see if it boots. If it does, start rechecking things one by one until you find the culprit.

Thanks scott! I was able to run msconfig and uncheck everything under start-up, but still the computer froze during start-up... what else can I do?
... thanks for the help!

Boot to your XP CD and run the Repair option.

I don't have an XP disk, what other options do I have?

Why don't you have one? Do you have a Recovery CD? What brand PC?

I think I found the problem... first is tried to restore the PC with these retore disks that had image files which opened with norton ghost and I guess I erased the operating system, while booting up its displayed 'Missing Operating System' and didn't go further... so, I reinstalled a older WinXP version... and I think the video card (e-GeForce 6200 LE from NVidia) is causing the PC to freeze. When I disable it, the PC boots up fine, and when it's enabled it doesn't... but I resently installed this video card in January to get the multiple monitor feature, and it was working perfect, no problems at all, what might have caused the PC to start freezing up all of a sudden? Thanks for the help!

Ok, If you tried using the Recovery CDs then stopped in the middle you lost everything. If you installed additional hardware then you will have to install the drivers immediately after restoring the image.

I never proceeded with using the recovery disks because I guess it erased the operating system, when I reinstalled the winxp I did install the driver for the video card and that is when it starts to freeze up, I was looking to see if I can update the driver but I couldn't find an update for it... what else should I do? Thanks!!

I would complete the recovery.

When I first tried to use the restore disks I think erased the operting system and in doing that, the Norton restore program was also erased so I guess I can't use the norton image file restore disks. Do you think I could change some settings that will keep the video card from freezing the PC? When I enable the video card's driver its freezes up and I also noticed it started to reboot the PC too... but when it's disabled it works fine... what do you think?