XP Not Booting and Restarting (Possibly Hardware Problem)

chanakber

This is the problem. When I start my computer it freezes at startup, where the windows boot screen appears and the green lines go forward. After a few seconds it just stops and freezes. I restart the computer and go to "Use Last Known Good Settings" If I get lucky the computer comes up the Welcome Screen then logs me in. As soon as I see my desktop the computer restarts. I can go into safemode and the computer turns on, but system restore does me no good.

I tried using memtest86, but by the time it finishes the fifth test the computer restarts and I'm back to the begining. It can't be the harddrive because I just bought it about 1 1/2 month ago. The problem has been coming for 2 weeks after I bought it. Everytime I format it, it works the first 5 or 6 times I use the computer, but then it gets stuck again. If I leave the computer on, it restarts and brings me back to the problem. Some times it gives a BSOD with an UNMOUNTABLE DRIVE ERROR. So I use the windows repair to revive it, but it brings me back to the same error.

I went to the bios menu and set it to default settings, but same error. When I go the bios event log, I see "Keyboard Errors, Memmory Errors and 1 CMOS Error, all these errors have PreBooting before it. I haven't been to the event log since I bought this computer, I don't know how old they are, but the CMOS errors are at the end.

Computer Specs.
Intel Motherboard (Dont know the model)
2 256 Intel RAM chipsets
128 GFX Card ATI Radeon 8500
Western Digital 80GB HardDrive (the new one I bought)
(Please tell me what else to list to help solve the problem)

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There is my problem. I've allready bought a new harddrive, but its the same problem. I thought maybe I could ask here before I got professional help and end up paying 3 times more then I'd have to.

QCH

Hate to tell you but it's probably hardware. Hardware is more likely to fail early in its life than later (hard drives and power supplies the exception, they can die anytime).

Memtest is setup to run forever until you tell it to stop. If you system restarted, then something is not working correctly.

Unplug hard drives, extra PCI cards. CPU, Memory, Power supply, CD-ROM, and video card should be the only things plugged in. See if Memtest can run overnight without restarting.

Let us know how that goes first, then we can take the next step.

chanakber

I've left it running for 10hours, harddrive, and the 2 pci cards I had plugged in. Last time I used memtest86, this time I used memtest86+. It has 18 passes. Does that mean my RAM doesn't have a problem, because I'm planning on changing it anyways.

QCH

18 passes... sounds like the memory is stable.

Like I said before, just because a component is new doesn't mean it's immune to failing. Next step is to download Western Digital's Hard drive diagnostic software.

If you can burn a CD, HERE.
If you want to run it off a floppy, HERE.

Run the full test... it will take a while but that will guarantee that your drive is fine.

Report when that is done....

chanakber

Another problem, I left it over night today, it was just running the whole day yesterday. When I woke up the computer was turned off, no one turned it off, so what does that mean?

QCH

Hmmmm..... maybe a power supply problem, maybe a motherboard problem. Unfortunately, the only way to test either one of those is buy another one. Power supplies are cheap and that's probably your best starting point. See if you can borrow one from a friend for day.