pc won't start up

[billabong]

Hi, my pc won't load, it goes straight to the screen where it says choose which mode to start up windows, safe mode etc whichever mode I try including start up windows normally, it just goes back to the same screen so just won't start windows up at all
Any ideas what to do? It's been running very slow since installing ZoneAlarm security, don't know if this has caused the problem.
Thanks

[davey6]

what windows are you running ?

zonealarm does make the pc startup very slow but still should not give you a non start error such as this.

very little you can do if it won't even start in safe mode.

if your running windows xp and have a full xp install disk you can try the repair option.
vista also has that option but i have yet to see it work.

[billabong]

It's Windows XP.
I did the recovery disk and it seems to be ok......for the minute lol!. I have decided to use a differerent security and chosen Kaspersky, I found a free 30 day trial. Is this a better option than ZoneAlarm in your opinion? I always ran Norton but it gave me problems with I.E. and I had to recover then too. The browser just would not work and I couldn't even access internet to get Mozilla Firefox.

Just another quick question Kaspersky says i need service pack 2 before it will install. I'm rather confused about as what to do as I've read that SP2 causes configuration probs...do I need it or should I find a different antivirus brand? Sorry for all the questions.

ps so glad I have found this wonderful website, so thank you for your help/advice and patience with ppl like me.

[davey6]

norton is not what it use to be, in fact its become a microsoft program now and full of crap.
not used norton for about 5 years myself.
i switched to zonealarm pro but i admit i got fed up with that slowing my pc down at startup and like you i switched to Kaspersky, so far in the three months i have run the pro version its ok, one thing it does that i don't like it stops all email messages till you ok or delete them it ask's what to do.
i would like to add a safe list in to that section so i could add emails that can be delivered with delay but so far it won't let me do that.
but apart from that its better and faster then zonealarm.

i would now skip sp2 and upgrade to sp3 which you can get direct from windows update.
it took a while for m/s to iron out the bugs in that service pack but they have done that now .
its just one big round up of all the updates.
if you go for that remember to shut down anyfirewall and antivrus before you install the dervice pack or you will run head long in to more problems.