Weird problem...Hopeless?

NeuroPhys

Junior Member
Nov 16, 2001
2
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I've been pulling my hair out over the following problem, and I'm hoping someone can help me out (with the problem, not the hair):

Several weeks ago, I started having problems with a Win98SE system (that had worked fine for a year up till now). Every once in a while, seemingly at random, the system would reboot while running windows. No error message, no blue screen, just a reboot as if the plug had been pulled. This would only happen under windows, and only seemed to occur when the system was in use. For example, I ran a DOS burn-in, memory check program for 6 hours with no problems.

To make a very long and ugly story short, I tried everything (removing all peripherals, changing the memory [crucial memory used], changing from an AGP video card to a PCI one, virus checks, trojan checks, etc.). None of this made any difference. The system would still randomly reboot.

Finally, I went ahead and reformatted the HD, and began to reinstall windows. Now, here's the really weird part...Windows installed up to the point where it runs windows for the first time. After it starts running windows, but before it gets to showing the icons on the desktop, it reboots again. This happens every time, and so windows is never able to fully load. HOWEVER, windows will start normally in safe mode!

Does this sound like a bad motherboard problem???

System specs are:
Abit BE6-II 2.0 motherboard
P3, 700mHz
300w SPI power supply
IBM Deskstar 20GB, Ultra 66, 7200 RPM
Asus V6800 (AGP) or ATI xpert@home (PCI) video
512 MB crucial memory

Any help would be very much appreciated!

- Peter:confused:
 

Alex

Diamond Member
Oct 26, 1999
6,995
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did ya change any parts recently?

also try to get all latest drivers / mobo bios... that helped for me... i had random booting at one point...
format, new drivers, no problem! :)
 

InFecTed

Senior member
May 15, 2001
874
0
76
Sounds to me like your power supply is bad.
Try replacing it and see if same sh*t happens.

But I'm like 90% sure its the PS;)
 

Jiggz

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2001
4,329
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76
Clear the CMOS and then set it to default setting. Install minimum peripherals to install windows, i.e. video card, memory, hdd, floppy and cdrom. Re-install Windows. If it still would not load all the way, try flashing the bios to an upgraded version.
 

bluemax

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2000
7,182
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While the possibility is less likely - there are some viruses out there that can cause problems such as lockups and reboots... you have any kind of antivirus software at all?