Computer restarts at log in screen

I have a Dell Computer about 2 years old. It was running fine until one day it began to restart with out notice. I would get to the log in screen and it would restart again. When I try to go to safe mode it will restart as well. My first thought was the registry but even before the registry is loaded it restarts. I'm considering formatting the drive and loading my back up files. But I am concerned with the fact I do not have the drivers for my SETA hard drives. Any suggestions?

 

Classic symptoms of a hardware issue. First thing to do is check the seating of your Graphics card, then any PCI cards and the memory cards. Removing and refitting them is the best approach, but if you are wary of doing this then wiggling them and pushing them home can also do the job. Check all cables are also fully home, particularly the data cables to the drives.

 

Hardware issue?

After following the suggestion you gave, I continue to have the same symptoms.

 

Sorry Jazzman, I couldn’t have been paying attention earlier. On re-reading I see it could be either a hardware or software problem. Always best to eliminate hardware issues first so I would next suggest that you download the hard drive manufactures diagnostic app and run that from CD or floppy to check the hard drive for faults or bad sectors. If that gives your drive a clean bill of health than you can be pretty sure that it must be a software problem.

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT
http://support.wdc.com
http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...rt_Shdiag.html
http://www.ibm.com/support/us/en
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...loads/seatools

 

Disconnect any added hardware like PCI add-in cards, USB devices, printers, etc.

Not being able to get into Safe Mode indicates a significant problem.

You can boot to the Windows CD, choose the first selection (press R) and enter ckhdsk /r in the Recovery Console.

If the "repairs" do not work, you can go through Windows installation and choose "Repair the current Windows installation ". It will reinstall the current drivers.

Go to the Downloads section of the Dell website. There it will tell you how to get the "Service Tag" for your model. You can use it to get the driver downloads for your computer.
www.dell.com/support

Matt