Windows XP Home keeps rebooting before desktop

I have an old clone puter with a 500 mhz proccesor, running xp home . 256m ram. It just rebooted one day and when it gets through the bios screen and shows what drives are present --it pauses for a second or two ---then just simply starts rebooting . I have tried safe mode. recovery ---basically all of the available options ---but I just think I need a bigger hammer !!! I've tried replacing the ram , got a new hard drive , just can't get the da** thing started to install it ---any body out there got a clue?????

 

Sounds very likely you have a faulty piece of hardware in your machine, and Windows is tripping up when it intiialises it during startup.

Could be a number of things and should be looked at by a tech if you havent the resources to swap each piece of hardware you have with tested to be working ones, to isolate the problem.

You can try this though. Do a boot with the bare essentials only. This means remove anything you dont need to boot Windows. Any cards like modems, netowrk, sound etc, and CD players, floppy. If you have more than one stick of RAM take one out and see if it is that, and swap and try teh other one if it isnt.

To boot into windows all you need is this

Power
HArd disk with windows (duh right )
Motherboard
CPU
1 stick of RAM
Video card or on board.

 

oN iT !!1

I kinda had that figured , but wanted some input before I went rippin and tearin. Gotta feeling it might be on the MoBo, but I'm gonna do the ol POE and see what happens . Just wanted to see if I got any hits on a possible Virus doing it !!! Thanks man !!!!

 

No problem. I suppose there is a small chance it is a virus, but if it wont even start in safe mode, it is less likely. I also assume you have scanned for viruses so you would know if you had one.


Good Luck!

 

Swap out the power supply.

I have had a nearly identical problem more than once in the past and discovered the cause was a faulty power supply. I suggest you swap out the power supply for a known good power supply first. Takes about 10 minutes.

I keep a spare power supply handy for the next time my computer starts rebooting for no apparent reason.