Trust me , the extended warranty is never worth it . Reseating the memory chips is always a good first step . I had very similar symptoms on my P4 Windows XP pro machine a few days ago , it wound up being a bad boot sector on the HD . Now , with a different drive installed as primary , the old drive works , for now . Before the swap , it'd stall at the screen that says "Windows is starting up ". I actually had to call Microsoft to get my reinstall authorized. It was not a complete ordeal , just a minor pain .