Computer stuck on infinite reboot loop

manveruppd · 12 Mar 2008 at 12:17

I'm at the end of my tether with this guys, would appreciate any suggestions you had. My PC was just idling there while I was talking on the phone (not even any background apps running apart from the usual like anti-virus, Google Desktop etc.) and it blue-screens, reporting an error caused by atapi.sys!

I tell myself, ok nm, it's been running for a few days straight now without a single reboot, so didn't think much of it, but on restarting, it reboots itself again a couple seconds after the Windows splash screen appears! I try again in Last Known Good Config and exactly the same happens, I try again in Safe Mode and this time it takes much longer to reboot, showing a scrolling list of several hundred drivers, apparently hanging after giveio.sys and rebooting a minute or two after that. I then try resetting my BIOS to defaults, and that made absolutely no change at all either. (All speeds and voltages were at stock anyway, and CPU temp was at 35C in BIOS so that can't be it)

Computer is an E2180 on a Gigabyte P35-DS3R Rev1.0, with aPowercolor HD3850 and 2 SATA HDDs, powered by an Antec HE 500 and running XP SP2. It's been running stably for days, gotten its virus and spyware scans, eaten its veggies, and had no new software installed on it apart from Skype 2 days ago and Dawn of War Soulstorm 3 days ago (which I played a few games of last night and it didn't cause any kind of crash), neither of which was running this morning when it BSODed.

I'm really puzzled by this guys, desperately need some input. I'm hoping it's just an OS problem and can be fixed by doing a repair-install of Windows, but I can't for the life of me imagine how such dramatic OS corruption could've happened while the computer was just idling there! And if it's a hardware problem instead I really need to identify which bit it is so I can get a long-enough run up to help me stick it far enough up the manufacturer's rectum, so any tests I can run please suggest them no matter how wild and off-kilter they may sound!

davethe11 · 12 Mar 2008 at 12:33

from my experience this may be a memory issue, do you have more than one stick of ram in the machine? If so, leave only one module in and boot, if you still have problems put the other module in on its own and boot.

Could also be a power issue, your psu could be dying. Do you have another psu you can plug in and see if you get any problems?

manveruppd · 12 Mar 2008 at 12:43

No spare PSU I'm afraid, I'll be very disappointed if it's dying though as it's a 1-year-old RMA replacement of a previous Antec Neo! Surely if it was a power issue it would become apparent before Windows started booting though, wouldn't it? Doesn't the computer draw the most power during POST?
I'll run Memtest for a few hours to check if it's indeed the memory.

Outcast · 12 Mar 2008 at 14:57

Gotta love windows (NOT)

Usual hardware test... Boot from a Live CD and leave it running for a while...see what happens. Your'll get a good idea that way whether or not to start faff arsing around with ram & psu etc.

I assume your cd/dvd is IDE ?

Mootang · 12 Mar 2008 at 15:12

manveruppd said:
I'm hoping it's just an OS problem and can be fixed by doing a repair-install of Windows, but I can't for the life of me imagine how such dramatic OS corruption could've happened while the computer was just idling there!

Some pcs at work have had the same problem as you are describing and putting a new image on the hard drive fixes it, so i guess its an os problem (seems to happen randomly to ones with xp on, doesnt re occur on the same pc)

manveruppd · 12 Mar 2008 at 15:44

Ran SeaTools to pass the time while I went off to find a working computer with a cd burner so I could make me a bootable image of memtest86, and when I'd come back my boot drive had come back with a single error, near the beginning of the drive. I asked SeaTools to repair and I'm gonna try rebooting now to see whether it boots - if yes I'll guess a failing (only 2 months old :-/ ) hard drive caused OS corruption. If it doesn't I'll run memtest.

manveruppd · 12 Mar 2008 at 15:45

Outcast said:
I assume your cd/dvd is IDE ?

All the drives are SATA. Does it make a difference?

Outcast · 12 Mar 2008 at 15:51

not really. I believe atapi.sys is still used.

It was just my mind pondering.

manveruppd · 12 Mar 2008 at 15:52

You gave me a momentary smidgeon of hope there, that if i could disable the PATA controller the problem would be solved... Alas!

manveruppd · 12 Mar 2008 at 17:43

Fixing the error in SeaTools made it stop rebooting, and after a fairly long spell of chkdsk fixing the drives on boot Windows started up and it seems to be working fine now. I'll be damned what caused the hard drive corruption to happen so suddenly and BSOD the machine though! Should I be worried that my drive is going?

Also, any piece of software in Windows that can verify the OS's integrity? The hard drive corruption presumably occurred on some bit occupied by Windows files otherwise it wouldn't have been crashing on boot, so it'd be a good idea to test whether it needs reinstalling.