PC keeps rebooting itself

Did you get a blue screen while running windows when it shut down on you (since you unchecked the option to reboot)?

 

There are a couple of things I'm not clear about. Firstly, if you used a boot floppy with no config.sys and just the one line in the autoexec.bat file, it should have simply done what I said in my earlier post, but you said it asked you about cd support. I would like you to make sure there is as little as possible running at this stage so we can add things slowly and find out at what point things fall over, so can you check what you did? You might like to run my test overnight (or whenever you're not able to work on the PC), and re-install XP during the day (just in case you've fixed the problem by one of the means suggested by myself or Zander). Which brings me to my second question; did you run my test at all? If so, what was the result?

Is the test software you're running DOS or Windows? Really it needs to be DOS to keep things simple. Does the memory test software have a repetitive test mode? You may find that the problem isn't always present, in which you will need to run the test continuously.

 

HI Guys
Right I'm getting confused, (not hard to do is that) I will start at begining, I made the AUTOEXEC.bat file and put it onto the win98 boot disk, no problem there, when i put it in the machine it came up with the 3 options i mentioned before, i wasnt sure which one i was supposed to choose so i tried both the with and without cd support, now im wondering why i have win98 on my pc lol was i suppose to have a machine without a windows at all? I know how to format with 98 and onwards no prob, just wasnt sure thats what i was supposed to be doing,
I ran the memory diognostic check for over an hour and it never came up with any errors.
power supply is a 300w this is a spare one that i had lying around,

I was wondering about the possibility of changing all the pieces one at a time to see which is at fault, i have a second pc that the kids use, its 6 months younger than mine and i can use the memory, processor, lan card, fans, power and even the floppy and cdrom if need be, if i change all these one at a time and its still doing the rebooting then that will only leave the mother board wont it?

the only piece i cant change is the graphics, i have a car in my pc the kids is intergrated on the MBoard

This might be quicker of trying to find the fault wouldnt it,
Stitch

PS i am trying to follow all instructions but sometimes I wish thy were more in english than swahli lol

edit forgot to mention Brummig the boot disk doesnt have a config.sys file on it at all.

 

Unfortunately computers are complicated machines - more complicated than anything else you own. If you don't understand something, feel free to ask. Only you know your ability, and I for one don't want to waste time typing unneccessary detail whilst you're thinking "why is he teaching me to suk eggs?" (I had to spell it "suk" because the forum software believes the word, when correctly spelt, is offensive, and replaces it with four asterisks).

I just took a look at my Win98 boot disk and discovered that config.sys is hidden. MS like hiding important things, and I pretty quickly unhide everything on my PC so I don't end up monumentally confused like you are. OK, boot from the floppy, select "Start computer without CD-ROM support ", and when the A:\ prompt appears type del config.sys, press Return, and reboot (press CTRL-ALT-DEL). Press any key when prompted, and let the machine stew for several hours. Let us know what happens.

You need to run any test for longer than an hour, since as you yourself have found the PC once ran for four hours without rebooting. Could you re-run Zander's memory test please, and could you or Zander tell me if it is a DOS program (I can't even open the web page)?

I don't recommend swapping things from a working PC to a non-working PC, as you could damage something from the other PC and end up with two non-working PCs. You don't know what is broken on the PC, let alone what caused it to break. Also, not all internal components are swapable, as they might not be electrically compatible even though they are physically compatible.

 

There is nothing that I could with agree more.

I will just say that I had a very unhappy wife.

BillyBob

 

Brummig
The memory tester is a DOS program. Copy it to a bootable floppy and run it from there. That's about all there is to it. It will run continuously until you either pause it or shut it down. Makes one pass than starts over and will do the same when it's done with the second pass (an on an on it goes ). Here's a quote from the page.

Wonder why you can't get the page??? It's a MS page and I don't see anything on it that would cause somebody to not be able to view it because of security settings or anything like that. I don't know what the deal is there.

That's probably a good point you have there about swapping hardware now that I think about it. Put a Dell power supply in a computer that's not a Dell or put one in a Dell from a computer that's not a Dell and you'll fry the motherboard, power supply or if you're really unlucky, both. They aren't wired in a standard way. Everything plugs in ok but the connector that connects to the motherboard isn't wired in a standard way. Things are switched around in the connector (unless they've quit this practice recently).

 

Hope you bought your wife a bit more than a bunch of flowers to make up, BillyBob.

Edit:

Thanks, Zander, that's what I wanted to hear.

I've no idea why I can't view the page - sometimes these things happen, perhaps because somewhere the route my request takes hits something half dead.

 

Well the only thing I can realy say honestly is;

" I do not intend to do it again. "

BillyBob

 

HI brummig
Right i put the win98 boot disk in afgain and did as you said i put in del confic.sys and rebooted, it has now stopped on a page which reads,.....


Preparing to start your computer.
This may take a few minutes, Please wait.....

The windows 98 startup disk could not create a temporary drive for the diognostic tools. This may be because this computer has less than the minimum required extended memory.

Path not found - :\COMAND.COM
Path not found - :\EXTRACT.EXE
Path not found - :\README.TXT

Bad command or file name
The diognostic tools were successfully loaded to the drive

File not found

To get help, type HELP and press ENTER

A:\>


I have not been prompted to press any key as yet
Stitch

 

If you did that, you got it wrong. I said type del config.sys.

It also sounds like you didn't replace AUTOEXEC.BAT on the floppy disk as I asked, as you appear to be running the Win98 startup disk AUTOEXEC.BAT. See my post of 1 Day Ago 15:16.

If you want to see what is the content of your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, type type AUTOEXEC.BAT and hit return when you get that A:\ prompt. If it says pause, you got it right.

 

Sorry Brummig that was my spelling, i did put in del config.sys at the A:\ prompt and i did make the note pad document called AUTOEXEC.TXT and i renamed it AUTOEXEC.BAT and placed it on the boot disk
The following is a list of files on the booot disk.....
ASP12DOS System file
ASP14DOS System file
ASP18DOS System file
ASP18U2 System file
ASPICD System file
AUTOEXEC.BAT Text Document
BTCDROM System file
BTDOSM System file
DRVSPACE AVG.Update
EBD WinRAR archive
EXTRACT
FDISK
FINDRAMD
FLASHPT System file
HIMEM System file
OAKCDROM System file
RAMDRIVE System file
README Text Document
SETRAMD MS-DOS Batch file

I could have sworn that on my old disk there was only 3 or 4 files on it but i dont have that anymore, there never was a config.sys file and my pc is set to show hidden files.

 

I can tell from your post where you listed the output that whatever you *think* you did isn't what you actually did. Make sure A:\AUTOEXEC.BAT contains pause and nothing else. You can drag the file into Notepad to check, though note that if you edit and save it Notepad may save it as AUTOEXEC.BAT.TXT. I'm assuming A:\ is your floppy drive, which it probably is.

I've got to go offline now. Can someone else help stitch create a simple boot disk in the form I described? Not sure when I'll be back, but hopefully by Monday at the latest.

 

I remade a new boot disk and made a new AUTOEXEC.BAT file and did the same thing again, i put it in the pc and booted it, at the A:\ i typed del.confic.sys then rebooted, it came up with the same thing as i said in my last but one post.

stitch

 

There's something you aren't doing right. Where did you get the bootdisk from? There should be a config.sys file on it and it should be visible in windows explorer. It's not a hidden file (on any of my bootdisks anyway). Try this. Go here and download the Win98 OEM disk. Once downloaded, put a floppy in the drive and then double click on the file you downloaded. When it's finished making the disk, open windows explorer and click on the a: drive. Find config.sys and delete it. It will be there. I've downloaded this myself to check it out. Then, right click on the autoexec.bat and choose edit. It'll open in notepad. Delete the entire contents of the file and then type pause at the top. It should be the only thing left in there. Save the file, close windows explorer and reboot with the floppy in the drive. It should boot and stop at a line that says pause.

 

Hi Zander
Bootdisk.com is the site i went to for the files, i even followed your link to it just to be sure and iv made one disk after another and there is still only the files i posted above on the disk. i have the pc set to show hidden files so i dont understand where the missing file is, i downloaded the file to the desktop then put a floppy in the drive and clicked on the file on the desktop, it un zipped it or whatever to the floppy and they are deffinatly the only files on there except the one i put on AUTOEXEC.bat like you said,

Even though it was said not to swap bits with my childrens pc i have moved my hhd's over so i can now use that instead of the laptop all day.

I have replaced the hard drives with a spare that i had so can work on that, obviously it wasnt the hdd that was at fault as this one is now been on for over 24 hours without a break. so it will be a process of elimination on the remaining origional bits in the drive.
There are only the (MBoard, processor, memmory, graphics card, dvd rom, cables,lan card and fans) which are origional to it, i presume one of them is the culprite. The mouse keyboard and monitor are different.

is there somewhere else to find a boot disk as for some reason i just cant see the config.sys file on it anywhere.
stitch

 

Going back to this message. It is saying that the computer's BIOS cannot acurately identify and set the correct speed settings for the CPU. The solution would be to get the latest BIOS upgrade from the motherboard manufacturer's website.

I went to Asus, the latest BIOS version for your motherboard is 1013 (do not use a beta version). On the download page for your model (A7V8X-X), on the left side of the page you will see links to "How to upgrade your BIOS" and "How to check your BIOS version ". If there are choices for how to run the upgrade, use the DOS floppy disk method (assuming that you can boot to a floppy OK). Do not use a Windows or "online" method since your system is unstable.
I take it that the CPU has been changed. If a BIOS upgrade could not fix the problem then I might wonder if one or some of the CPU pins was bent during the replacement. If you need to take the heatsink off the CPU to inspect the pins, you will need to replace the thermal compound that is between the heatsink and CPU (there are good instructions here: http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm)

Matt
BTW, I have successfully upgraded the BIOS of a motherboard when the floppy drive could not be recognised. I burnt the files to a CD, got the burning program to make the CD "bootable" and set the boot sequence in the BIOS to CD first boot device.

 

That's not correct. Windows is a complicated operating system that makes considerable use of the hard disk for its own purposes. The hard disk is also one of the more unreliable components, and figures highly in the list of suspects. If Windows puts something on the HD and later it doesn't get back what it put there, what happens next is totally unpredictable. From the point of view of your own files, *if* the hard disk is faulty *and* your children's PC writes one of your files to the problematic section of the disk, you can kiss goodbye to your work. However, the copy of Windows on your children's PC will not be using your disk for it's own purposes, so the problem may take longer to show itself.

There's also the possibility that the hard disk did something to damage one of the components in your PC, and that therefore it may do that again to your children's PC. If you don't have a backup of your work, I suggest you copy across your files and get that hard disk out of your children's PC ASAP.

What we're are trying to do here is cut down the zillions of possibilities. In creating a boot disk with a floppy we're cutting out all the things that might go wrong via Windows. You say the floppy disk has AUTOEXEC.BAT on it, but that is not enough. It is the content of AUTOEXEC.BAT that is important. I (and others here) can tell from your posts that the content isn't right. I can also see that you are not saying things that give me any confidence you have edited the file to make the content as requested.

Now, I know you think you're doing it right, so here's a story. I used to work as a network admin, and I remember once, over the phone, trying to talk the restaurant manager through a simple procedure, whilst executing the same procedure on my own PC. At one point I asked him to read to me what it said in a particular window that should have just popped up on his screen. He swore blind that no such window had appeared. I couldn't understand how his PC had failed to do something so basic. After some discussion I ran two long corridors and two flights of stairs and found sitting bang slap in the middle of his screen the piece of text I was asking him to read. His response was "Oh, I didn't think that was important ". This sort of thing happened quite commonly. I'm not going to leap in my car to help you edit a:\autoexec.bat. Please, go though the instructions you have been given very carefully, keeping in mind that what you are doing wrong is staring you in the face, but you've closed your mind to it, just like that restaurant manager.

mattman raises a good point. Have you done anything to the PC hardware since you bought the machine?

 

There has been no hardware changes at all to the pc since i built it less than 2 years ago except adding the second drive 6 months ago to store my files on, i figured if windows went down on my drive my files would be safe on the second one,
The Autoexec.bat file, well i opened notepad typed in the word pause pressed return then saved it as autoexec.txt once saved i then changed the name of the file to autoexec.bat and placed it on my boot disk with the files i downloaded from bootdisk.com of which was the OEM version of windows 98. it was a file i saved to the desktop then placed a floppy in the drive clicked on the file and it opened onto the floppy. the list of files that ended on my floppy are the same over and over again each time i do it.
stitch

 

I think I know what the problem is. Note the following extract from your list:

AUTOEXEC.BAT is *not* a Text Document, and the other two files have .SYS extensions. On my PC AUTOEXEC.BAT is correctly listed as an MS-DOS Batch File. I think think you've been fooled by one of the most foolish ideas MS have ever come up with. From an Explorer window select Tools...Options. Click on the view tab, and look down the list for "Hide extensions for known file types ". I bet you have it checked (the default). Uncheck it; having it checked is dangerous, pointless, and confusing. I bet this file is really AUTOEXEC.BAT.TXT. Now you can see what's really on your disk, check your work again.

 

OK, if you have not changed the CPU, then I think there may be one or two other reasons why you would get that error message. One is that the PSU is failing and not giving the correct voltage supply. You should be able to check the voltages in one of the menus in the BIOS. Although unlikely, the other may be that CPU fan is failing or becoming blocked. There may be a readout for the rpm's of the CPU fan in the BIOS menu or remove the fan itself, clean and inspect that it spins freely (also check the fins of the heatsink for blockage).
You may get readings for voltages and fan speed using Everest or Sandra in my signature.

Check that there are no signs of capacitors leaking or swollen.

Matt