it doesn't get as far as the windows bootup screen but when it loads up again it comes up with the "do you want to start windows normally" "safe mode" so i guess its windows crashing...
It could be that the drive is slow to spin up. Check your BIOS and see if there is an option somewhere to change "Initial Delay For IDE" or something like that. Add a second or two, this will give the drive a little more time.
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Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited May 2004
IF you enter safe mode, then restart out of it, Windows can try to fix what is wrong as it restarts after going in-- if something is not working after it comes up, replace driver for that thing first, if that does not work, get non-working hardware checked. How is VERY complex, sometimes XP cannot selfrepair, but if not hardware alone, can be bad drivers, corrupt drivers on arrival, partially installed drivers, or just drivers buggy against other drivers and\or version of Windows driver(s) was (were) written for is older than Windows running. I'm keeping this short.
Have you tried testing your memory with memtest? Maybe a stick of RAM has gone bad or something. Memtest should start before it reboots so you could give it a whirl.
Is your RAM overclocked? What brand is it? If it's a decent brand, up the voltage to it by .1 and see if the memtest errors go away.
The Initial Delay for IDE setting should be in the NF7-S BIOS... see if it's called "spin-up delay" or something similar, or "HDD delay" or something like that.
You might also want to look at the load you're putting on your PSU. If you've got a lot of devices running, 350W might not cut it.
I have twinmos pc3200 ram 2x256mb sticks.... i will have a look in the bios and see if i can see that setting, looked before but no joy.... i think the load should be fine because it is supposed to be a good PSU, i have a dvd-rw cd-rw hard drive and 9800 pro... i have no problems when the system is up and running although i do seem to be occasionally getting errors Unrefferenced memory errors now for time to time (might be wrong on the name)
For sh!ts and giggles, try disabling quick POST in bios and let the machine do a complete post check, with "stop on all errors" also selected in bios and see what happens. I've also found memory problems like that. Since memtest turned in some errors, your problem might well be due to a bad stick of ram.
How many fans do you have, optical drives? etc... I have always seen that random restarts are caused by a PSU going south. Might pay to check out your PSU as well.
Comments
Norge
test 5 92.9mb
test 7 92.1
that means nothing to me apart from the fact that errors are bad... i guess one is gone then?
The Initial Delay for IDE setting should be in the NF7-S BIOS... see if it's called "spin-up delay" or something similar, or "HDD delay" or something like that.
You might also want to look at the load you're putting on your PSU. If you've got a lot of devices running, 350W might not cut it.