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computer continuously restarting

overst33r

overst33r

Diamond Member
I am trying to fix a friend's computer that continously restarts itself. The first time i hooked it up, it booted up fine and went to the desktop and i was browsing the web and all of a sudden the computer just restarted itself. Then it just went into this cycle of restarting. I could not even shut it down manually. I unplugged it and let it sit for a few minutes. I come back and plug it back in, push the power button and it just gets to the screen where it says compaq and just restarts there over and over again. I have bought a brand new TT power supply and it initially fixed the problem. I was running adaware and spybot and a few other programs...for about 2 hours in all. Everything worked fine and i thought i solved the issue.

A day later friend calls me back and says the computer is restarting itself continuously...I am going to try to uncheck the auto restart in the debug settings and reseat the memory modules...and if that doesnt work, i will reformat. If that doesnt work..i really have no clue...any help or input would be much appreciated.

The computer is an older compaq with a Athlon xp2400+ and 256MB of RAM running windows XP home.
 
Sounds like it could be bad capacitors on the motherboard, or perhaps an overheating CPU or chipset. Check for bad caps (badcaps.net) or fans that have failed or are starting.

Since you say the PSU is new it?s unlikely that would be the cause, I?m not sure what else could be the cause.
 
I have checked the capacitors, there are NO bulging or leaking capacitors. I have reseated the RAM and dusted the inside of it. I ran adaware, spybot, and norton all at the same time to get the CPU hot to see if it is a heat issue, I might run Prime95 later to be sure. The computer is running fine at my house for nearly 2 hours now and it has not restarted spontaneously yet.

Could there be something at his house that might be causing the computer to restart like this? Possibly a printer or the outlet that the computer is using? When he called me back he says his daughter was online surfing the web and the computer went into the rebooting frenzy after about 20 minutes. When it was at my house it was running continuously for 2 hours without restarting.

I will update on the issue if it continues to happen. Thanks for the help so far.
 
Maybe there is a power fluctuation on the main circuitry. I use line conditioner, just in case my old power lines could be a hinderance.
It works at your house because your power is AOK, and not when it's back at your friend's.

Who really knows. Maybe a sinister gremlin is popping up before Halloween! 😀
 
I have just checked the temperatures: chipset is at 23C; CPU was up to 64C at one point; and the HDD is at 48C.

The chipset is at a good temp, but it makes me wonder how this is acceptable to compaq, the CPU and HDD are way too hot. Maybe its just a bad temp sensor. The CPU core is a Thoroughbred, i dont remember them running this hot. i have a palomino and it maxes out at 52C. If it is a heat issue, I wonder how it suddenly happened.
 
If running WINXP go into My Computer Properties(right click on My Computer and select properties). From there go to the Advanced tab and then go to settings under Startup and Recovery. From there make sure "Automatically Restart" is unchecked under System Failure. Let me know how this works out for you.
 
Well we are back to square one...i reinstalled windows and the exact same thing is happening again. This is odd to say the least...
 
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