Will Not Boot

[Heffe]

I built a computer a couple months ago (amd 1800+, epox 8kha+, 256 megs, Windows XP Pro) which will now not boot all of a sudden. The computer posts fine and continues to the starting windows screen. After that the screen turns black for a few seconds and then a blue screen with white lettering which I cannot read flashes for a split second and then it reboots itself. Another odd thing is that the floppy drive will not work. When booting up, the green light does not come on and it cannot read a boot disk. I checked and it is still connected. Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[zayened]

this could be your RAM gone bad. I've had this happen many times and it was always my RAM.

 

[Pederv]

Zayened is probably right, you may have a bad stick of memory. The blue screen only flashes because you have "Restart on Error" enabled (the default). Your boot order (in the bios) may not check the floppy first, but instead checks the cdrom or hard drive first, that may be the reason a bootable floppy doesn't work.

 

[Heffe]

Thanks for the ideas, I'll try changing up the memory. On the topic of the floppy dive though, I looked at the bios and set it to boot from the floppy and after post I got an error that said "INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER" eventhough I had a bootdisk in the drive. The green light never turned on during the boot either. Is my floppy drive dead too?

 

[DaiShan]

floppy may be dead, or you may have a bad cable, or worst case scenario it could be a bad controller, try swapping with a known good floppy cable, if that doesn't work try swapping with a known good floppy drive, if that doesn't work it is your mobo, Also if changing out new RAM does not work, I would check PSU next

 

[dexmanone]

From the fact that your floppy won't read, I'd say start with the PSU. It sounds like it's half dead.

 

[Pederv]

This is a DOS boot disk that your using, right?
Your not trying to use your recovery disk as a boot disk are you?
If you formated your drive with NTFS, booting from a floppy won't allow you to access the hard drive.
Try pressing F8 when windows starts up and select safe mode or logged boot.
Can you get into safe mode?
Logged boot creates a file that shows what windows does during bootup and whether or not it was successful.