Windows rebooting over and over

A few days ago I came into possession of my cousins year and half old Gateway computer. Apparently he never used anti-virus or spyware or anything to maintain the computer running smoothly. I finally figured out how to attached my old harddrive as a slave drive and got the computer to boot. I deleted all his programs that I would not be needing or using, his pictures and music and such then installed and ran an anti virus program, adaware, spybot, ran disk defrag, disk clean up and registry cleaner. During this clean up process I rebooted the computer a few times and ran across no problems. I installed a program from a CD a friend gave me while back that has an option to run scandisk check (I believe it was called) and once it finished the computer rebooted itself and now will not stop. It gives me the Gateway screen with the option of pressing F2 to get into the boot menu then it gives me the Windows XP window but instead of opening up desktop it shuts off and reboots again. I found a post on another site from a few years ago about using a Windows XP installation disk to go into Recovery Console and I went in and used the promt fixboot but nothing seems to work.

I was told that running the chkdsk cause some kinda virus to mess with my motherboard and would need to buy a new one. I am hoping I was informed incorrectly and someone else can help me get this issue fixed.

Thank you!!

 

Can you start up in safe mode?

And why afer taking all that time to clear the system did you run software from a CD a friend gave you (I'll assume freeware) without even knowing it's name?

 

I am not sure how to start up in safe mode. It gives me the screen that says GATEWAY and says Boot Menu F2 BIOS menu F10 .... then it goes to the Windows XP screen with the progress bar underneath. Then instead of going to the blue Welcome screen it just reboots.

The program I isntalled is called Tuneup Utilities 2007 it has options for disk defrag, registry cleaner and such all in the same program. I selected an option that checks for errors on the hard drive although I cant remember what the exact name they had for it was. I know that it told me I had to reboot and once I did, it went through a 5 step process that took about an hour. I believe it said either Scandisk or checkdisk. Once that process was over is when the computer started rebooting itself over and over. Now i don't know how to fix it.

 

Ok, with luck if you tap the F8 key during power up you'll see a menu appear after the Gateway screen. If you do select safe mode.

If not restart again and when you see the Gateway screen press F2. You should then see a list of boot devices, select your primary HD (if known) then start tapping the F8 key again and select safe mode when the menu appears.

If you're not sure about which is the primary HD post the options F2 gives you and I or others will assist.

If you do manage to select safe mode, let us know if the computer starts normally.

 

Ok so I hit F8 and got into safe mode and Windows XP was already selected so I hit ENTER and nothing happened for like 10 minutes. Manually turned off the computer and tried again. The 2nd time I went into Safe Mode and again selected Windows XP and it just rebooted itself and start on the same loop. I tried it a 3rd time but when I got into the menu to select Safe Mode there was another option that said something along the lines of "Disable reboot if system starts with error" when I selected that option it gave me a completely blue screen with the following message:

[FONT= "Arial Narrow"]Stop:C0000135 {Unable to locate component}
This application has failed to start because basennb32 was not found. Re-installing application may fix problem. [/FONT]

Now what? I have no idea what basennb32 is or how to reinstall it lol

 

Have a look here, I need some sleep now (It's 4:30 here) but I'll look back in a few hours and see how you're getting on.

 

I appreciate all your help so far. I noticed that although the error code is the same in the link you sent, the error message is different plus its for Windows NT instead of Windows XP. I am not sure I should try the directions on the page since they are a different error and for a different version...... I dont want to make it worse.

 

So that's what lack of sleep does

No don't follow those instructions... Do you still have the original OS disks?

Edit: Whilst I' was waiting I noticed you mentioned both CD and recovery console which is what I'm after .

Go back to the recovery console and type this

Code:

dir basennb32 /s

Make sure you get the spelling right, it must be exactly the same as you see in the stop error. Let me know the output of the above

 

Ok so my original idea had been to just reformat the drive completely and erase everything and start from scratch but I had been told it wouldnt solve the problem. Hard-headed me though......after hours of wanting to throw the computer out the window, I did it anyway. I removed the partition and had Windows completely wipe out and reinstall. It was working all of yesterday just fine after that. Today I opened it up and installed my 2nd hard drive so I can move some of my pictures and music and homework files over. Tried to boot it up and got a message that it couldn't find the hard drive. Shut it down and been using my old pc for the time being because I have to get too much work done. Going to remove the slave drive tomorrow and try it again with just the main drive.........if that works I'll install the slave drive again and see if it has a problem this time. Gosh I really hope this works before I have to pull out my hair lol.