This is a long tale, however, my computer kept restarting after i'd logged in, so thinking it must be a virus, i had to take the hard drive out of the machine and put it in an enclosure and run it through two different virus checkers, spybot and malware bytes attached to another computer. the hard drive seemed to be clean then, so i hooked it back up to the computer, but the computer then wouldn't even get to the login screen before it would restart. i tested the ram, it was good. i backed up the hard drive, reformatted and am now trying to re-install windows xp. the problem is, is the computer starts going into the windows install, then suddenly restarts again. I've tried resetting the bios/cmos, i've tried booting from an external cd rom. i've disconnected the internal cd rom and floppy, and am trying the reinstall from an external usb cd rom, but the computer keeps restarting before the windows re-install will finish. It just now started making this siren sound. The fan is turning on the mother board and at the back of the machine, but the siren keeps going. I'm out of thoughts on this. Any help would be appreciated.
computer restarts while trying to re-install windows xp
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Make and model? Sounds like overheating Make sure Fan is spinning on CPU and does not shut off . Other then that it is bad Ram. You might try a different Hard Drive as well
Thanks for the replies. Its intel celeron D, microstar ms 7211 motherboard, with 1gb ram (brand new just installed half an hour ago), with 80 gb western digital hard drive. We've reformatted the hard drive, thinking that might be the problem, and now can't get through the install of the xp on the hard drive before it restarts again, just like before. We've left the screen open to the "health" screen, and it doesn't appear to ever go above the max temp before restart level. The fan on the cpu is working, the side of the cpu box is open, the fan on the back of the computer is going, yet it keeps restarting. We've reset the cmos by removing the battery and changing the jumpers, then changing them back. 'We are just at a total loss at the moment.
ok, we used canned air blown on the fan to keep the computer going, and got to a blue screen that came up with an error saying that there was a problem with windows and the computer has to be shutdown to prevent damage . . . the error was 0x0000007b, and said to check for viruses, do a checkdisk/f and check the hard drive, but we can't get that far. So now i don't know if its a hard drive problem (we went to the western digital website and did their check (3 steps) there and it said all was fine - the last test was the reformat), or a heat sink or mother board problem. Any help would be appreciated. THanks
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Did you put the Old RAM back in? Sounds like that the new RAM is the culprit.
ok, we tried a new hard drive, and it will get to the black windows screen, and then restarts. i haven't replaced the RAM yet with the old ram, i'm trying it with a desk fan blowing on it now, and seeing if that will work. i'm now thinking that it has to be an overheat issue, even though it doesn't appear to be over heating when we watch the health screen. My heavens this is a frustrating process, but thanks to all of you helping, its appreciated!
Well we set up a desk fan blowing on the inside of the computer, and have been able to get the replacement hard drive installing xp. When we tried to put the old hard drive back in, the computer restarted again, so I'm thinking there is a hard drive issue. We are going to wait to replace the new ram with the old ram until the windows is installed, so at least i know that the OS is there. We'll try replacing the ram first, and if it keeps working then we'll move the fan and see what happens. I'll let you all know. Thanks for all of the assistance thus far!
well the saga continues. We got part way through the windows install and got a semaphore error. We were using a usb cd rom and after checking the internet found that it may be a communication error between the cd rom and the computer, and when we clicked ok, the install restarted. it then came up with an error message saying that an asms (i think) file was needed, but it wouldn't give us the option of looking on the cd rom at the xp cd for the file, the only two option were global/(something) and a: (being the floppy drive which isn't even hooked up), so we tried hooking the internal cd rom drive back up, and restarted the machine, and we didn't even get past the first boot up screen before it starts restarting, so now i don't know if its a problem with the cd rom drive. the cd drive came with the computer and had never had a conflict before. so i'm back to being at a loss of what to do. Any suggestions? thanks in advance
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Open the case and look at each of the Capacitors . . Look for leaking or bulgeing caps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
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