Guys, a friend of mine has a problem. He's had his computer for about a year, and has a new problem neither he nor I have ever seen before. Last night, while resuming from his screensaver, his computer went to half-screensaver, half-desktop and froze up. Upon rebooting, Windows gets just past the load screen and stops. He tried repairing his Windows installation, but that didn't help. Anybody have any ideas what could fix the problem short of reformatting? Or, do you think it's something related to hardware and not Windows itself?

His setup (eerily similar to mine):
Asus M2N SLI Deluxe mobo
AMD X2 4200+
eVGA 7900GT (slight factory overclock)
2gb Corsair XMS RAM (ddr2 675 I think)
320GB hard drive
2 cd drives
600W Kingwin Mach 1 psu
X-Fi Xtreme Gamer

Can you get into Safe Mode?

Also, were any changes recently made to the computer? i.e. updated video driver, Windows updates, etc.

You may want to boot from a cd and run a spyware / virus scan

No updates made, can't get into safe mode.

Try reconnecting the hard disk cables and the power cables from the psu to the motherboard and hard disks.

he can boot past the lading screen, not a connection problem

overheated the graphics card or PSU

I don't think reconecting the hard drive and cables matters, the computer was on at the time. I doubt anyone would be crazy enough to play with their machine while it's running. Since you can't boot into safe mode, then I'd say it's either hardware or Windows. Because you did try a repair, I'd say more likely hardware failure.

Try to do some tests and see if anything is wrong. In particular a RAM test. I use MEMTEST86+. Just boot from the CD and let it run for 3+ passes. I usually just start it and go to bed. You can't test RAM too much.

format the drive if that doesnt work, hdd = dead.

use ontrack data recovery softwarre to recover your data before you boot. ( youll need a 2nd computer)

After reformatting, everything's working. Guess something just screwed windows up. Thanks guys!

Download Knoppix or another Linux LiveCD. If it runs fine under Linux, then the problem is most likely Windows.

well then yay for you =]