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New computer restarts on bootup

K

KillerPotato

Member
Hi all. I have just put together my new computer, after having to RMA a dead motherboard, andit posts this time. However, it will get past the bootup and bios screen, but then when I get to the OS selection screen, I select win xp and it then says it could not start properly, and asks me what procedure I would like to take (Start Normally, Safe Mode, Use last known configuration, etc.). Starting up windows normally causes the computer to restart immediately after it shows the Windows XP loading screen, with a quick flash of some blue screen with white text only at the top.

Does anyone know why its restarting, and what to do? I had an inkling that it might be the PSU not giving enough power, since im using a 20 pin atx connector on a 24 pin board, but its supposed to work. I'll switch those out and report back, but could the problem be somewhere in the bios settings or something else? Thanks for any help you guys can give
 
Chaintech NF4 Ultra Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
1 gig (512*2) corsair value ram
ATI X800XL
Thermaltake 480w PSU

Normal Boot drive is a 60 gig with 80 gig slave and a 250 gig on an IDE card
 
try it without the ide card in the system

i was having the same behavior with my system, it was due to an ide raid card that was installed. turned out i needed to update the firmware on the card to make it compatible with my chipset.
 
Test the memory. Try running just one stick and see if you get the same problems. Then try the other. If possible, run Memtest86 on each stick on a different system.

Edit: Unless your PSU is going bad, it is unlikely that you have a power problem. A quality 480 watt PSU is more than enough to power the system you listed.
 
Try to underclock the cpu by a just a bit and see if it boots. If nothing set bios to all defaults and turn off things you wont be using (possibly onboard sound, raid, etc)
It may be an overheating problem with the cpu, but most likely a ram problem. Take out one stick and only leave one in. If it still restarts swap the sticks and maybe change the slot its in. Post what happens
 
Switching out memory and into different slots didnt make a difference. The only words i can catch a glimpse of on the blue screen just before it restarts are Hard Disk. I dont think its the CPU because in the system health settings in the bios it says that it stays around 36 degrees celcius. However, I will try to underclock it, but Ive never attempted overclocking or underclocking anything, so how do I do this?

Edit: The blue screen looks like its trying to run a hard disk check after an unexpected restart. I'm beginning to lose hope. Should I try to reinstall windows or boot off of a CD?
 
If you had CPU problems, you probably wouldn't even POST. Have you tried a fresh install of XP. If you have hard drive corruption, XP would have difficulty booting. Have you tried booting from a bootable CD?

Edit: Sorry lag time between reading your last post and edit and my own post. It looks like we are thinking similar things. I'd try a bootable CD first and check your hard drives for corruption.
 
Hmm only reason i told you overheating is because it happened to me. I would start my computer and it would run fine for maybe 5 minutes and then just shut down or restarted. When i started it back up again it would shut down within 2 mintues, and then 1 minute and them almost instant. I finally figured out the cpu wasnt properly covered with thermal paste and was heating up fast while it was on and would hit around 65' and shutoff.

It also may be hard drive corruption. How many times have you reformatted the drive? In my experience the more i messed with my hard drive (formats) the quicker they died out on me. The hard drive may have bad sectors when booting into windows causing a blue screen of death error but you never turned off windows automatic restart whenever an error occurs causing this issue.
 
did the OS work well at all at any time?
I didn't quite understand that. Anyway, if you never managed to operate the system well, it could be a disk problem.
Many people had tough time with RAID functions, if you don't have a RAID array, or even if you do, try going to the BIOS, and disable anything that has to do with RAID, and see what happens next. good luck!
 
I havent reinstalled windows once since i got XP professional(a couple years ago), so i wouldnt think that it would be the cause of the problem, but I'll see what I can do with a winXP cd.
 
The whole reinstall process went without a hitch, but it still hasnt made any improvements, and it restarts at the exact same spot every time. Ive used completely different sticks of ram that I used in computers before it, and it made no difference, and neither did replacing the power supply or taking out the other hard drives and cards. What else could be the problem?
 
have you tried a clean install, not a reinstall? reinstall only checks the files on your HD with the ones from your CD, that doesn't mean that if something prevents windows from starting up is going to be deleted.
Make a separate partition and install windows on that.
 
Originally posted by: KillerPotato
.....it restarts at the exact same spot every time. ......... What else could be the problem?
Click to expand...

What spot are you talking about? the XP logo during boot up? At that point, drivers and apps are being loaded......so it is possible that it's a drivers issue. If you acan go into safe mode then maybe you can remove a few items...or if possible to dissable some temporaily until you get it back to booting normal.
 
Yes. Its right before the xp logo with the bar at the bottom that has the blue boxes scroll across. It flashes the xp logo, then flashes the disk checking screen, then restarts. I will try deleting some of the driver folders and see if that does anything.
 
Deleting driver folder would not be a good idea... you might delete some required drivers for boot.

Good question though, did you do a clean install of windows or just regular reinstall. Reinstall keeps some old files that may be causing conflicts now. Try backing up your data and do a clean install if this is the case.
 
i had a friend with same problem. I think you have to do a fresh install, not a repair or from an upgrade CD, but reinstall fresh. But im not sure if this will fix it.
 
Hmm seems like a lot of us have been getting data corruption problems lately. A week ago my oldest sister's HP had booting problems due to data corruption, with the same symptoms. Her's wouldn't even get past the HP blue logo before restarting.

I've also had corruption problems twice within two weeks (more in my thread "Microsoft Works"), and what happens with mine is that it locks up during the Windows XP logo with the blue scrolling bars at the bottom, requires a button-reboot. After a few of those it tells me that some files are corrupt and I gotta repair-install. I just do a clean reformat and install, which is what I suggest you doing.
 
Thanks all. I got it working with a clean install of XP. However, I am trying to connect to my wireless router using a card, and it gives me the option to choose from a list of available networks. I choose the one I'm using, and it makes me check the box that allows me to connect even though theres no security. I then press connect, and it closes the box, but then a couple of seconds later the same little reminder box comes up allowing me to choose from a list of available networks, and it hasnt connected to the internet, and the process repeats no matter how many times i go into the window and choose to connect to my main network. Is this a common problem, and does anyone know a way to fix this?
 
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