So my comp is forcing itself to restart as soon as it hits the windows loading screen. As I understand it (and please correct me if I am wrong) this could be the case of bad RAM, failing PSU, dead HD, or corrupted windows files. Please let me know if I missed anything. Any ideas on how to rule out a few of these without having to take it to a shop or buy new parts that I might not need? Thanks!
Bad RAM- problem would not be as predictable as that. you'd get bluescreens at random points during your session Bad PSU- consistent booting up means it's not this. by the time the comp gets to the windows loading screen its already at max power usage on the PSU, until you start doing some 3d gaming. Bad HDD- would not boot usually or would cause windows to have bluescreens and/or missing/corrupt files during boot Corrupted windows files: probably the cause, though i havent seen it reboot because of that. Testing solutions: do in this order Bad hard drive: The easiest part to test. You need to spend about $30 for this part though, unless you have a second computer to plug the hard drive into. plug the hard drive into another computer and see if you can read the files consistently from it. You can also do check disk on it. If the hard drive is useable consistently then it is not the problem. You can also use a usb 2.0 hard drive enclosure to test it. OS: Unfortunately if it doesnt boot you cant really see if the OS is the problem. Bad PSU: Unplug some of the unnecessary peripherals from the computer and disconnect extra hard drives or one of the optical drives. If it boots up then either the PSU is unable to supply enough power in which case it is dead, one of the drives you disconnected was bad. If this computer is an OEM computer, then the psu probably is bad as OEM manufacturers tend to put weak power supplies into their computers. I have an emachine that had a 300W power supply in it. you pretty much can't connect any other drives than the ones that it came with. Test each removed drive in another computer or with a usb 2.0 hard drive enclosure (connectors on these are compatible with cd drives too) to see if it works. Bad ram- im not really an expert on how to test memory. I do know that the crashes from bad memory will be inconsistent because of how the OS allocates it to programs. Some other Xoo ppl are more experienced with this than I am.
Is it doing anything prior to the restart? any funny noises or messages? have you tried re-booting in safe mode? Also if it does boot in safe mode. go to run and type in "msconfig" and go to the startup tab, and un-check anything for now. Also, are you running vista or xp? Have you made any updates to the computer that you know of? I know windows has been sending out updates the past month like crazy. Something in the auto-update could have corrupted.
You could have some bad sectors on your hardrive or the partition that the os is on could be corrupt. If it's xp, boot to your xp cd. Choose repair install. At some point it will ask your for your administrator password, if you dont have one just hit enter. From the prompt type in chkdsk c: /R. This command will fix errors on your disk and also locates bad sectors and tries to recover readable information. Good luck!
When the loading screen pops up press the escape key and it will show you the loading messages that are in the background. See what the last on is and thats probably the problem. My MP3 player caused my computer to stop on load and the last message was something about a USB and my MP3 was the only new USB device.
Thanks for all the replys so far. I am running XP and I will be going to get my disc for repairs sometime today. The ESC on the windows load is not working. Is that because I have XP? or because its crapping out before any load messages?
Try safe mode first described above. That ESC key thing sounds more like Win98 unless you haxored your XP.
I've had the ESC thing work on XP. Like I said its how I found out how stop my comp from freezing on load up. EDIT: Nevermind a message should come up saying press something to see post bios message. Thats how I fixed mine.