XP Restarts after storm 1

[timlowe]

Hi, im about to work on a Windoxs XP machine that reboots itself about every 1 - 5 minutes. This all started after a thunderstorm. Im thinking it is probably the power supply and hopefully not the motherboard. anythoughts on this before i ruin my night tonight working on it?
any info is always appreciated.
Thanks,
Tim

 

[bcastner]

If it boots to XP then your motherboard is fine.

Something else, however is at issue. Check the Event Viewer logs to see if there is a fatal system error being thrown at the time of the reboots. This can identify software and some hardware components as issues.

But the power supply is the best guess.

 

[timlowe]

if the motherboard was shot, it wouldn't boot all together right?.. i'll check the event viewer like you suggested.

thanks,
Tim

 

[Adkron]

I had this problem before.

After searching for quite some time I scanned my hard-drive for errors. There were quite a few that could be fixed and some that couldn't. After fixing the errors and destroying the other info The computer worked fine.

Seems as though the power surge caused the hard drive needle to jump and messed up some of the info on the hard drive. When Windows tried to access that info it just rebooted.

Good Luck.

Amos
Computer Science
U of MO - Rolla

 

[timlowe]

hmm.. thats interesting. I didnt think about that at all. I'll try running a scandisk tonight. Thanks.

Tim

 

[linney]

If the storm was directly overhead any excessive vibration might have loosened something inside the machine.

You could try turning off Automatically Restart and see the error as a BSOD.

 

[Adkron]

bcastner,

Just because it boots does not mean the motherboard is fine. I have had bad mother boards still boot, but certain functions did not work. My specific problem was with the internal speaker. Anytime it tried to send sound to the speaker it would cause a reboot.

Amos
Computer Science
U of MO - Rolla

 

[bcastner]

Adkron,

The original poster queried:

Hi, im about to work on a Windoxs XP machine that reboots itself about every 1 - 5 minutes.

I responded, to which you replied:

Just because it boots does not mean the motherboard is fine. I have had bad mother boards still boot, but certain functions did not work. My specific problem was with the internal speaker. Anytime it tried to send sound to the speaker it would cause a reboot.

Thank you for the mention of possible STOP errors with the internal speaker. If you could cut on of the two lines to the piezoelectric speaker on the motherboard , do you still throw a STOP error? If, once booted under Safe Mode, and using Device Manager and disable support for the PC Speaker under System Devices, do you still have a machine that will not boot in XP Normal mode? Or fails between 1-5 minutes?

Otherwise, the motherboard speaker cannot create a stop error that can stop the machine from booting. This is a PIC or cascaded PIC error, and you need to replace the mother board for failure to handle hardware IRQs. (Which the native driver for the on-board speaker does not use in anyway of importance).

Honestly, I would take this as a very early indication of bad or leaking capacitors on the motherboard.

http://www.badcaps.net/ident/

I agree with you the motherboard is the issue. I disagree with you that you can in the OS create a fatal error, in the absence of more fundamental problems, by asking the internal speaker to beep.

Keep us informed.