Sometimes, about 70% of the time, My PC wont start properly, When the problem occurs, after the windows load screen, it stays on a black screen, changing from the regular arrow cursor to the arrow with the hourglass next to it.It takes about 20 minutes before the log-in screens finally appears, which takes 5minutes just to allow me to enter my password, and after I do, it takes another 20 minutes to log in. When I face this problem, I just restart my pc until it starts properly (which usualy takes about 1-2 minutes) I changed my hard drive yesterday, Had to reinstall the OS. My old hard drive fried, but I started having the same probleme after I started installing a few things, like the Service Pack 3. I dont think the problem occured on the Service Pack 2. Its my 3d hard drive in 3 years. My pc is a 3Ghz single core 1G of Ram, Ive had it since 2004, Made a few internal changes over time. Need help! Thank you! 1 person needs an answerI do too

This does sound like hardware failure. Since you've replaced the hard drive with the same results, your motherboard is probably the culprit. The computer is 6 years old; time to replace it.MS-MVP - Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!