My bleeping computer P4 2.8G, Intel M/B D101GGC is barely one year old. OS XP-SP2-Home fully patched. For the past few weeks it has started giving problems on boot. After the initial XP logo on a black background, the screen goes black and nothing further happens. This seems to happen only from a cold bootup after the computer has been shut down. Restarts so far seem to be OK. The only solution that seems to work at present is to press hard reset, select safe mode from the startup menu and then do restart. I have done chkdsk /f and all the usual security scans. I have antispyware and antivirus installed but since the freeze seems to be before windows starts it doesn't seem like a software conflict especially as everything was fine for the first months.
I would be glad of any suggestions.
Many thanks.

How about if you get into the startup menu by pressing f8 during startup and select system restore.

try setting ur bios to the right boot order. CD then HD then floppy

Check your power supply.

In Windows, check the SMART status of your hard drive and the temperatures of your components (Speedfan is a good free tool for this: http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php )

Then, try MemTest86 (free here: http://www.memtest86.com/ ) and an in-depth boot utility from the manufacturer of your hard drive.

Also, check your video card in Windows - see if it has some diagnostic tools included with it.

maybe graphics card errors.