Reboot on startup

ChroniC · 21 May 2006 at 19:31

My computer started randomly shutting down and restarting. I traced the fault to the power supply, but being lazy i didnt replace it till it was too late.
It rebooted and now blue screens. (i have now replaced the PSU) Infact now it goes through bios checks then restarts before loading windows.
I booted from my xp cd and that doesnt load, blue screens too.

I have run Powermax on the hdd (all passed), i have taken all compents out that i dont need.
Gfx card seems fine, 2sticks of ram, have tried them seperately in every slot, so cant think its them. Resit the cpu, motherboard diagnostic code says fine.

I dont have spare ram to test whether they are both borked, but i dont feel they are (although this seems to be the logical reason). So all parts seem to work, and it ran powermax and the bios perfectly.
I cant boot from cd because when it loads all the files it says loading windows, then reboots. Without a reason.

Anyone had a constantly reboot pc? whats main components thats going to be fubared?

noxidjkram@hotm · 21 May 2006 at 19:37

Does it always blue-screen at the same point?

Its generally indicative of memory as you suggest, but its possible another component is causing the memory fault...

Have you tried memtest86 on the memory?

M

ChroniC · 21 May 2006 at 20:47

noxidjkram@hotm said:
Does it always blue-screen at the same point?

Its generally indicative of memory as you suggest, but its possible another component is causing the memory fault...

Have you tried memtest86 on the memory?

M

no i was wondering if there was a memory diag program. i will, hope it can e done from cd, cause i dont have a floppy disk

noxidjkram@hotm · 21 May 2006 at 20:52

Yes - memtest86 can be run from cd too.

M

ChroniC · 22 May 2006 at 02:22

noxidjkram@hotm said:
Yes - memtest86 can be run from cd too.

M

done - std test 2 pass 0 errors 1hour long.

So in theory that can only leave the gfx,cpu, or mobo. The mobo seems fine, not sure if nvidia make a test for that, gfx is old, a GF3 could have gone nuts but all video stuff has worked fine so far. Cpu would cause this i wouldnt have thought, has run all tests fine.
This is the first time i havwnt been able to solve my own pc problem, will have to start swapping out components to find out.

It reboots the second the mouse and keyboard should kick in. Any chance its a boot sector virus? or virus on loadup? any way of scanning this from a boot cd??
Thanks

str · 22 May 2006 at 02:37

I suggest you try booting Windows with no USB devices plugged in as it might be related to the USB ports or a USB device. Also have you tested booting into safe mode and seeing if it runs stable for a bit?

ChroniC · 22 May 2006 at 03:07

str said:
I suggest you try booting Windows with no USB devices plugged in as it might be related to the USB ports or a USB device. Also have you tested booting into safe mode and seeing if it runs stable for a bit?

Nothing but the keyboard and mouse are plugged in. No usb devices.
Safe mode loads all drivers then as its about to move onto that next section, (which loads something not sure what, wish i knew as i might be able to narrow it down abit) reboots.
In theory its probably the point it loads the gfx because the monitor normally blinks. Dont have another gfx card to swap it out, but i dont get any agp problems bleeps from the mobo. :\

str · 22 May 2006 at 03:34

Download Gentoo 2006 Live CD and boot from it. It'll boot into X but obviously don't start to install it. It's a fully functional setup once it's booted, can surf the net etc using it. If it crashes like with Windows it's highly likely you'll have to start doing some swapping of hardware.

Also passing memtest doesn't always rule out the memory being at fault. I've found memtest doesn't always show up errors when I've run memory out of specification yet Windows doesn't boot or crashes.

Could be anything causing it really though, CPU, memory, motherboard, gfx, etc.

Pindy · 23 May 2006 at 20:40

Hi ChroniC

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I seem to be having the same issue with my PC too.

Yesterday I had a power cut just after I uninstalled a piece of software. It asked my to restart the PC for changes to be effective and I said no as I was going to do a few other bits, but then I had the power loss.

Now my PC won't boot up properly. I can go into BIOS fine etc, but it brings the Windows logo and the bar loads up two and a half times before my PC restarts.

Any idea what my problem could be?

st00dent · 23 May 2006 at 21:11

Just wondering, do you use AVG anti virus? When I built my new pc, that used to cause it to do exactly what yours is doing after I installed certain windows updates.

ChroniC · 24 May 2006 at 17:29

I do have AVG anti virus installed or did,
It could be a windows driver thing, i suspect its something to do with the GFX card, personally ive come to this conclusion, but untill i go back to uni, with the apprioate tools i cant tell you.

OK,
Memtest86 passed, so i dont think memory.
Powermax passed, so not hdd
Mobo has run all these test and bios is fine, so assumed no mobo.
Doesnt load windows in Safe mode or normal, so i have 2 options, GFX card, or windows driver error.

The thing that makes me thing its the gfx card rather than drivers is that when i try to reinstall windows from cd it loads all files, say "loading to windows" and reboots. If it were drivers it would let me reinstall windows, but again why would the gfx card start loading then? Does that use agp?

It sounds like you guys have fatal error in windows and you could possible format your drives or repair broken drivers? can u boot in safe mode?
I get no error message just powers down and back on.

I will tell you if the GFX replacement worked, or not.
I dont want to format and see, as i have a lot of data on the hdd i need.

acharris · 24 May 2006 at 23:52

Hi, I would say that the ram is faulty even though it is passing in memtest. It is quite possible that the PSU could have blown the memory modules, as I had a friends P4 that had faulty ram and even though I run memtest on each stick and in the pair, every configuation returned clear,after 3 days it restarted and would not boot into safe mode, or normal windows, a bit like yours does.

See if you can get hold of a CD based linux download like knoppix, as I used that on his and it failed to load that as well until I removed the faulty stick and everything works OK now.

Anthony