Major Boot Problem

This is so weird. I'm working on this Windows ME machine. The user says that about 3 weeks ago it started to hang on startup for about 10 minutes then finish loading. I started it up, it posted, showed the Windows ME splash screen, then went to a black screen with nothing but a blinking cursor in the top left hand corner. It sat at this black screen for literally 10 minutes! (It could be longer because I never actually sat there the whole time.) I reinstalled ME and it still happened. Now I'm thinking hardware. I'll check into that tonight when. But, has this ever happened to anyone before? Do you think it's ME or hardware gone bad?

Thanks.

Did you do a clean reinstall of Windoze?
If not might be network related i.e. searching for a network drive.

It happened to me one time in more than 10 months since I installed ME. All I did was Ctrl-Alt-Del and it restarted again without any problem.

I don't think it is hardware, I hanven't changed or added any hardware. It doesn't look like sofware either. I haven't installed or removed any sofwarre, not before, not after the incident.

What I suspected at the time is I must have hit the keybord somewhere inadvertentely and I wasn't aware of it.

Klintman, does this computer have a network card? It sounds as if it is trying to link to a nonexistent network.
Just a thought,
Reg

After I reinstalled ME and it still took forever to boot, I took out all the PCI cards and then put them back in. It works fine now.

Thanks.

It was the Network card I am sure of that!

There was no NIC.... it might have been the modem.