Windows XP (Pro) reboots automatically during startup

[YellowOnline]

Hi people,

I have lots of computerproblems these days... The subject line says it all now: I boot a computer, everything goes good till the moment you see the XP icon, and then suddenly it reboots. I tried Save Mode, I tried Last Known Good Configuration... all have exactly the same problem.

It gets worse though: I want to boot on a floppy to see what's wrong, but it ignores the floppy. I tried it with the first of the six XP bootdisks: nothing.

In the BIOS the floppy drive is the first boot device. Even when I disable booting from the HD there, it continues to boot directly the HD, thus putting me into the endless spiral of booting, rebooting again.

I think this is a rather strange problem :s Anyone a clue?


Peace,

Yellow

 

[tonycard]

Just a thought but test your memory see if that helps

http://www.memtest86.com/

 

[YellowOnline]

Thank you for you suggestion tonycard, but since I can't boot from a disk nor get to a command line it is difficult to use such a program... :s (I don't have another PC to put the RAM in, as they all have different types of RAM)

Peace,

Yellow

 

[wmccall]

It gets worse though: I want to boot on a floppy to see what's wrong, but it ignores the floppy. I tried it with the first of the six XP bootdisks: nothing."


I've noticed some odd things with clones lately. Even if you have a bootable floppy and Boot from floppy first selected some systems will no boot from floppy if boot from hard drive is in the boot order and the drive is bootable. Try temporarily disabled booting from HD to see if it will boot from floppy.

I also worked on a clone (AO systems I think) that will hang on boot if you have a non-bootable CD in the drive even if you don't have boot from CD selected.

 

[YellowOnline]

Hi wmccall,

I already disabled the boot from HD in the BIOS, but ignores it as well (as mentioned) :s

Peace,

Yellow

 

[tonycard]

Do you have a reset bios pin? Try to see if maybe that will fix up your bios issue to allow you to go to the a drive. Or just remove the battery from bios

 

[YellowOnline]

I got rid of the floppy problem by rewiring the whole thing. They (it's not my computer) had tried to install a CD-player and fucked it up.
Now I can get into the recovery console but I'm wondering what I can do. I didn't expect me to get this far as I was thinking it could be a power-related problem (as the power was changed only three weeks ago because the old one blew up). Since I get thisfar I assume it is a software problem anyway. Or am I wrong here? All opinions very welcome.

Peace,

Yellow

 

[bcastner]

As you can get to Recovery Console, do this:

http://www.digitalwebcast.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/cw_boot_toot.htm

 

[bithead9]

I had this problem on a laptop infected with one of the latest viri. Try pressing F8 on BOOT and pick SAFE mode. Then try system restore. Sometimes that works. If not, you can try pulling the hard drive and placing it in another PC with Norton AV installed. Scan the whole drive and let nav fix it.

 

[YellowOnline]

Thank you for your replies so far. I have been working on this problem again today... I tried quite some stuff too - except the virus, I was sure about not having one - , but, unfortunatly no changes. It's even worse I'm afraid.
Today I threw all devices out of it, except for the graphical card (no onboard video), the power box and the motherboard. I put another cd-rom drive, floppy drive and hard disk in it. The hard disk I used is a spare one lying around, so I tried to install another OS on it. Windows 2000 from DOS, everything going alright,... till the DOS part switches to the Windows part of the installation.
Guess what happens? Yes, the same...it just reboots like it used to with the other hard disk with another OS...
Finally, being naively optimistic at times like these, I retried a few times and once, only once, I had the BSOD saying INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE - I know the error from other circumstance, where I always found out what it was... but with this problem I'm stuck. My guess is, although I hope I'm wrong, that my motherboard is near death

Peace,

Yellow

 

[bcastner]

Bad IDE controller, or incompatable IDE controller board.

 

[garebo]

you can reset the bios configuration one of two ways.
Go into bios and simply set it to default settings, save and exit.
See if that helps you any, in other words, see if you can now change your boot devices settings.

Another way is to go into bios and find the place where it says something like:
configuration data - yes or no, and change it to yes, save, and reboot, then try the changes in the boot devices settings.

 

[YellowOnline]

The bootdevice problem was already solved, but thank you anyway, garebo.

bcastner, since it used to work normally for a few years, is it possible the IDE controller has become bad? If it would be an incompatibility issue the problem would've been there from the start, no?

Is there a way to test - like e.g. one or another benchmarking application under DOS - to be sure it is the IDE controller?

Peace,

Yellow

 

[bcastner]

Yes it is possible they can go bad, and your original issue seems to indicate that there is some complaint about XP staying connected to the boot volume.

But start here:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=297185

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315403