Computer keeps restarting

[Mesix]

My brother's computer is having an issue with restarting partway into the Windows XP bootsplash. He had the problem before, and reinstalling windows XP fixed it for a while. However, it happening again which leads me to believe there is a hardware issue.



It's an older P3 coppermine with a Radeon 9600XT, two IDE hard drives, two CD drives, and a PSU that came with my cooler master Centurion 5 (300w I believe? MORE than enough for this system, and it beat the old gateway PSU in every way.)


Thats the other thing, it's a gateway. Any thoughts?

 

[chairbornrangerx]

have him boot into safe mode and see if it boots completely then. If it does, I'd suggest going into the command prompt, and running a chkdsk /mbr to fix any bad sectors the hard drive might have. See if that helps it boot

 

[Mesix]

I'll let him know, and while that might fix the problem for now, I'm not sure what's causing it.



The issue came back after a full format.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

Check the memory also with memtest 86

 

[stu1811]

Originally posted by: michaelpatrick33
Check the memory also with memtest 86

There is a new version. www.memtest.org

 

[imported_Requiem]

Check for bulging/burst capacitors. I've seen this same issue with machines at my work (mostly Dells though) and a bunch of times it's been cap-related.

 

[ColemontHD]

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.