Note: I originally set setup logo, I meant startup logo. This system has had Windows installed for awhile now.
I installed a new Core 2 Quad in my system and was getting ready to do burn-in testing, but the thing froze during the Windows startup logo. Naturally, I thought it was something I did, so I re-checked to be sure the processor was seated correctly and the RAM was all seated properly.
Finding nothing wrong, I booted it back up and instead of being greeted by the usual login screen, I was staring at a 640x480 login screen! Odd, I thought. So I logged in and the ATI driver complained about how I either didn't have an ATI graphics card installed or the driver needed updating. Device Manager reported a generic VGA Adapter. So I shut it down and went to reseat the card. I found the heatsink was so hot it burned my fingers!
Of course, reseating it didn't do a thing, so I reinstalled the driver, got my usual resolution back but found it was idling at 79° C! Of course, it keeps randomly freezing during start up. The processor is nice and cool at 38° C, so no issue there. Is the graphics card toast? The graphics card in question is an ATI Radeon HD 4850.
Update: I'm running four instances of Prime95 and an instance of ATITool testing for artifacts overnight. Hopefully this will help narrow down the issue.
Testing results after 13 hours of ATITool and Prime95 show that the processor never exceeded 65° C and the GPU hovered around 89° C with no artifacts. I swapped the old processor back in and the freezing during startup persists. I was able to figure out that if the system is completely cooled and I boot it, the problem will reliably occur. For now, I've swapped in an 8800 GT to confirm that it is the graphics card.