UPDATED again: Still need help, computer reboots and gets to the winXP logo screen and reboots again

[alm99]

My computer just randomly rebooted and now it gets to the point where I see the WinXP logo starting up screen and it reboots, I tried safe mode, but it does the same thing, I tried my last good configuration and it still does it. I cannot get to the desktop. Help, what do I do?

UPDATE: I put the hard drive in another spare computer, this one, and used Western Digitals diagnostic tools and it passed. I tested and it passed, then route zeros and it passed. SO I guess its not the hard drive. I am testing the RAM now and I am on the first stick. I have 3 sticks, 2x256mb and 1x512, all Crucial brand. The first as got 580,620 errors. If all my sticks produce errors like this, would this be the source of the problem?

Update #2: I went out and bought a Kingston 512mb DDR 3200 stick and when I first tried to install XP I got a blue screen saying that my computer was shutting down becuase of an error and it was to prevent damage. The error had a bunch zeros. Kinda looked like this 0x000000AB 0x0000000203, stuff like that.

EDIT:
System Specs
Antec Aria Case with Antec Power Supply, the wierd thing about this is that on the 5v line I am getting 61.98, I am not sure what that means if anything since its always been like that.
Biostar M7CNG 400 motherboard
AMD 2500+ Barton
512mb RAM(currently)
WD 250gb Hdd
128mb Geforce Ti4200

 

[mechBgon]

If you have another desktop system, start by putting the hard drive drive into the healthy system as a second drive, copy out your data to the good system for safekeeping in case you need to reinstall Windows, and then you have some options. Personally, I would say heck with it and begin reinstalling Windows from scratch after rescuing my data. You could also try antivirus scans of the problem drive from the healthy system if its file-system permissions will allow it.

Was the affected computer protected by a firewall and current antivirus software? Was it fully patched? Was it doing anything, uh, "risky?" What version of WinXP does it run (home/pro)? If you do start from the top, I have some suggestions to make sure you get your security reasonably tight (both the first section of that page and also the stuff under Ongoing prevention down a ways).

Of course it could be something other than a security breach, and at the bottom of that page you'll find links to various hard-drive diagnostics that you could run whether Windows will start or not. Good luck

 

[alm99]

I took the hard drive out and transferred all my documents over to this computer. I went to try and do a fresh install of WinXP Pro and when you get to the point that you want to install or repair, I choose to install and once I hit enter to go to the next screen the computer reboots. I can't even do that. I tried using just 1 ram stick each time of the 3 I have, but its a no go. I tried taking out my vid card and working off of the onboard graphics and still the same thing. I stripped it down to just the hard drive, dvd drive, and ram, but nothing works.

 

[mechBgon]

Darn! What brand of HDD is it? Look for that brand's diagnostic utility at the bottom of that page I linked to, make a diagnostic floppy or CD-ROM, and run that. Maybe the drive has simply kicked the bucket on you

 

[alm99]

Its a western digital 250gb, purchased 6 months ago as a backup and its now my main hdd for the past 3 months

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: alm99
Its a western digital 250gb, purchased 6 months ago as a backup and its now my main hdd for the past 3 months

WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: alm99
Its a western digital 250gb, purchased 6 months ago as a backup and its now my main hdd for the past 3 months

nm mechBgon has you linked up ..quite a few peeps on here having issues appearslike on these newer bigger drives..

gl alm99

 

[alm99]

thanks a lot. I need to get of this backup cyrix computer

 

[TDiddy]

i had that too it was my ram

 

[alm99]

Updated

 

[bontu]

yeah that would probably be the problem. I was trying to install winxp on an old p3 and it always get read errors at a certain point and just would fail to install.

I installed win98 successfully but it was always getting random windows application errors. Like Iexplore.exe caused some error and has to close. After running memtest on it, found out the memory had alot of errors.

Win Xp seems to be more sensitive to memory errors.

 

[alm99]

Originally posted by: bontu
yeah that would probably be the problem. I was trying to install winxp on an old p3 and it always get read errors at a certain point and just would fail to install.

I installed win98 successfully but it was always getting random windows application errors. Like Iexplore.exe caused some error and has to close. After running memtest on it, found out the memory had alot of errors.

Win Xp seems to be more sensitive to memory errors.

Yeah, I get to the point where you hit enter to start the install at the initial blue screen at it reboots.

 

[McMadman]

A friend of mine had an issue with an old promise ata66 card, after a video card swap it no longer accepted the ata card, he removed it and the system booted just fine.

Narrow it down by removing excess hardware and booting off one stick of ram.

Also, the ram giving errors, could you have the timings too aggressive or overclocked too much?

 

[alm99]

Originally posted by: McMadman
A friend of mine had an issue with an old promise ata66 card, after a video card swap it no longer accepted the ata card, he removed it and the system booted just fine.

Narrow it down by removing excess hardware and booting off one stick of ram.

Also, the ram giving errors, could you have the timings too aggressive or overclocked too much?

I don't overclock and every stick gave thousands of errors, the 512mb stick gave millions of errors.

 

[Hanzou]

what program did you use to test your Ram? I am having troubles that arer somewhat similar to yours.

 

[alm99]

Originally posted by: Hanzou
what program did you use to test your Ram? I am having troubles that arer somewhat similar to yours.

I used memtest, created a bootable cd. I took out each piece of RAM and tested one at a time.

 

[McMadman]

Originally posted by: alm99
I don't overclock and every stick gave thousands of errors, the 512mb stick gave millions of errors.

It could still possibly be timings on the ram, but obviously the ram shouldn't be giving you any errors. Try testing the ram on another computer to see if it too gives errors. It seems odd that all three sticks would have gone bad at/around the same time.

 

[alm99]

Originally posted by: McMadman

Originally posted by: alm99
I don't overclock and every stick gave thousands of errors, the 512mb stick gave millions of errors.

It could still possibly be timings on the ram, but obviously the ram shouldn't be giving you any errors. Try testing the ram on another computer to see if it too gives errors. It seems odd that all three sticks would have gone bad at/around the same time.

What do you mean by timings? How do I correct this or check it?

 

[alm99]

went out an bought a stick of RAM and still having issues, now what?

 

[Jojo7]

You didn't really give complete system specs.

Can you ty another power supply?

I'm leaning bad mobo (most likely), power supply (semi likely) or cpu (least likely).

 

[lavagirl669]

I had this same problem,

it was a bad Mobo and PSU

 

[alm99]

updated with system specs, is there anyway I can determine if its the motherboard? I don't have any extra part laying around.

 

[Skippy81]

Check this link out:-

Link:

1)As it points out, older Micron (AKA Crucial) 2700 ram is known to be incompatible with your particular board. If your ram is indeed 2700 then this is the most likely problem. Make sure quick boot is DISABLED in the bios, as this will run a limited memory test at startup. Try lowering the front side bus to 133, if the system then works fine, blame the ram. Just because you bought the ram recently does not mean is was made recently.

2) I feel that bad processor is v. unlikely as your system POSTs.

3) Bad PSU is possible, retrieve all the voltage and temp readings from the bios and update your system spec on the thread so they can be examined. You could also try your P3 psu, providing it is 250 watt or better.

4) Hard disk is a possibility, especially if the BSOD occurs when windows installer trys to access the drive. Have you turned on SMART for Harddisks in your BIOS? Sometimes (very rarely) this feature can point you in the right direction.

Hope you are up and running soon.Link:

 

[Skippy81]

No idea if your Kingston stick is made by micron, but it is well worth going on a few Nforce 2 forums and checking compatibility.

 

[McMadman]

Without going heavily into details, memory timings determine how fast/often memory is accessed, I'm sure you've seen the various numbers around 2.5-3-3-6 (etc) the lower the number the better it performs, but if the ram can't handle the setting, errors can happen. However it dosen't sound like you've played with any of the settings in chipset features it's probably set to SPD which reads the values from the ram.

Since you have an antec power supply, that should be fine. I honestly doubt that all 4 sticks of ram are bad, I'd suspect the motherboard.

Are there any bulging or leaking capacitors on it? Here are some examples of bad caps.