Frozen on restart

[chaszal]

I restarted my HP laptop (Win XP Home). It had been on for a while, not on battery. It now is frozen at the start-up screen, no icons, no taskbar, no systray, ctl>alt>del doesn't do anything, the Winkey doesn't do anything. What do I do? I don't think there's an "off" switch. Should I just unplug it from the electrical current and let the battery run down?
Perplexed,
Chas

[poppy4]

When that happens to my laptop, I disconnect from the power line and take the battery out, and then put the battery back and either connect to the power or not and just start it, and it always sets itself right. Might be worth a try.

[chaszal]

Hi poppy4,
Thanks for responding. I've just deconnected it from the power supply; I thought I'd let the battery run down first. You say this has happened to you before?
Chas

[poppy4]

Hi Chas,
Yes, it has happened to me about 3 times in the year I have had the laptop...Dell Inspiron.....when trying to restart.....not on a full shutdown.....My Daughter , who turned me on to the laptop and has one herself, told me to do this when freezing on restart. She said that's what they do when it happens and it works for them as well.
IMO if you want to run the battery down, I would do it while using the pc, but it would drive me nuts to have it run down while frozen. There's no particular technical knowledge behind my feeling, just a personal thing....

[chaszal]

Hello again poppy4,
It worked. After the battery ran down overnight, I plugged it into the power supply in the morning and it booted normally, and is working normally. Thank you for letting me know that this was not a problem particular to my machine. It's still under warranty for a couple of years, but I think I'll wait and see if it happens again. Your "feeling" was the same as mine: the last time my battery ran down, when I restarted it came back to the same screen as when it stopped. Anyway, at least you and your daughter might have a new solution; taking the battery out and putting it back in would seem to be more of a fuss than what I did, unless, of course, you needed to use the machine right away.
Thanks again,
Chas

[poppy4]

Hi Chas,
Yu're Welcome.
Glad it worked out ...
Thanks for posting back.

[photolady]

Though what you did fixed the problem temporary, you also might want to find why it froze. It certainly is an underlying problem.

[chaszal]

Dear photolady,
Yes, you may be right. Certainly, if it happens just one more time, I'll take it in and quietly demand service on my warranty! It may also be prudent to write to HP.
Chas

[photolady]

taking the battery out and putting it back in would seem to be more of a fuss than what I did

How could that be harder than letting battery drain? Pull out battery seems to me would be the easiest route to go. It performs the same function as leaving the battery to drain, doesn't it?

Have you done any system maintenance on this computer in the last month? If not, you may very well be surprised that the cause was due to not the battery or the laptop in general but system files corrupted or some other files causing the problem.

[chaszal]

Hi photolady,
Yes, I do regular system maintainance. Thanks for the thought. Although I despise WinXP and it's "recovery disk" you get with an OEM version. (sfc with Win98 is so much better, and more informative) I also use Inctrl5 every time I install a program, and recover (with GoBack) any files that might have changed. So, I don't think it's anything I have done or not done. Thanks again.
Chas