HELP! My comp keeps rebooting!

[Omizzle]

This is what happens/happened. After a few minutes of (usually light) computer use, my comp would randomly freeze. I would do a hard reboot, but it would hardly ever reboot correctly. It would go through a reboot normally and immediately after the Windows screen, a blue screen would pop up for like .25 secs and then my comp would restart. Sometimes however, my comp wouldnt even get to Windows screen. It would just stop (freeze, i guess) on the black screen between the startup screen and Windows screen.

So I decided to reformat. My comp froze once or twice during reformat/Windows install, so that was a pain in the ***. Once I finally got that done, my comp froze again while I was installing audio drivers and once while I was trying to change a video setting. Now keep in mind that each time my comp freezes, I basically have to wrestle with it to boot correctly, since oftentimes it would freeze sometime during boot.

After a long while of this, the blue screen/auto restart thing started again. What do you guys think could be wrong with my comp? I didn't change any hardware or anything, it just randomly started like two days ago. Here are my specs:

AMD 64 3200+
2x 512mb Kingston hyperX pc3200
2x 6600 GT SLI
WD 74 gb Raptor
Seagate 160 gb 7200rpm barracuda
Seagate 250 gb 7200 rpm barracuda
Creative X-Fi Platinum
Fortron 500w BlueStorm PSU

HELP!! Please!

 

[jagilbertvt]

My guess would be bad memory, especially since it froze during reinstall of the OS. You can try testing it with memtest86.

 

[GalvanizedYankee]

If your RAM is good, check out pics at http://www.motherboardrepair.com/ be sure to read the list of symptoms. Use a magnifing glass with good light for a very close look-see.


...Galvanized

 

[Omizzle]

Alright, I'll try memtest86

 

[FelixDeCat]

Originally posted by: Omizzle
Alright, I'll try memtest86

Also try rebooting.

 

[PhantasyStar]

Hmm, same thing happened to me when I tried overclocking my CPU. Put the settings back and I was good.

 

[Omizzle]

Alright, I just let my comp sit on the "frozen screen" and after a while, a message came up telling me that my Windows couln't read from my selected boot disk. I did a "chkdsk" in repair console and it said the drive had one or more unrecoverable errors, however, I just reformatted yesterday?

I think I'm going to reformat one more time and if that doesnt solve the priblem, I'm going to have to buy a new HD

 

[harle]

Originally posted by: Omizzle
Alright, I just let my comp sit on the "frozen screen" and after a while, a message came up telling me that my Windows couln't read from my selected boot disk. I did a "chkdsk" in repair console and it said the drive had one or more unrecoverable errors, however, I just reformatted yesterday?

I think I'm going to reformat one more time and if that doesnt solve the priblem, I'm going to have to buy a new HD

This sounds like a problem i just posted about today on anandtech. I kept getting the "cant read from boot disk," or "boot disk failure." Although i never had the unrecoverable HD errors, i would say give the following a try before getting a new HD. This is how i ended up fixing the problem:
I took out the CMOS battery and reverting everything back to defaults. All the boot disk failure errors went away and i was able to install a fresh copy of XP on the HD without any problems. It seems simple, but it worked for me!

 

[jagilbertvt]

when you formatted, did you do a quick format or a full format? A quick format doesn't check the drive for sector errors. You can try running chkdsk /r /p from the recovery console.

 

[Omizzle]

hmm, i tried a full format first, but when it started again, i tried a quick. after that, it worked fine up until just a few min ago. Another thing, I hear a strange, faint, beeping-type sound coming from my HD.

Is it time for a new one?

 

[Tobolo]

Ive ran into this on clients computers. It usually has to do with a bad peice of hardware. Memory is number one culprit. However a close second is a hard dive problem. Over heating has caused this on larger drives. Make sure its cool and try that. If nothing works then go office space on it

 

[Omizzle]

Well crap! I sent my 160 seagate for RMA (the 200 is storage) and I bought my buddy's WD Raptor 74g. I tried booting with that and still the same problem!

What could the problem be?

Im trying RAM now

EDIT: Wasn't RAM