XP Machine continually rebooting

[dwishon]

I changed a dead hard drive and installed XP Pro on the replacement. This machine ran fine all weekend, when I took it back to the office and hooked it back up it would reboot over and over again. The only way I can get it to stay on is to start it in safe mode.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Hi dwishon

 

Welcome to FPCH

 

You took it back to the office and hooked what (the pc, the hard drive) back up?

 

What did you hook it back up to?

[dwishon]

Bad choice of words on my part. I should have simply said that I took it back to the office. Turned it on and that's when it started rebooting.

[Dalo Harkin]

Ok have you set the main boot device back to HDD as you would have had it on CDROM to do the reinstall?

[sparky12345]

Hi,

I had a similar problem recntly, constantly recycling.

Turned out to be a didgy connection to the motherboard where the hard drive plugs in.

[Jack Hackett]

it would reboot over and over again. The only way I can get it to stay on is to start it in safe mode.

 

Is there a quick glimpse of a BSOD as it crashes before it restarts? If so then from Safe Mode right click My Computer, select Properties, click on Advanced tab, 3rd option down 'Startup and Recovery' click on the Settings button, under 'System failure' heading remove the tick from Automatically restart, OK and OK again.

 

Boot to Windows normally

 

Now if/when the PC crashes the BSOD will be displayed until you turn the PC off, post back here with the error message displayed, the error code will help identify what is causing the crashing

[Seth]

Two good clues:

 

1) It ran fine all weekend but didn't start the reboot until you moved it.

 

2) It runs fine in Safe Mode.

 

Seems to me that it's a good possibility that at the office, a connected device (or its driver) is causing the reboot.

 

Other than the mouse, keyboard, and monitor, what else is hooked up to the computer when it's at the office?

[pilotbob]

I had a similar issue with a laptop belonging to a mate, he asked me to upgrade to a larger hard drive after which everything was fine until his son visited some dubious web sites and contracted some form of Malware. After this it wouldn't run even in safe mode but would just keep re-booting as you describe. I took the hard drive out and ran hdat2 on it and something had destroyed the drive. A new drive sorted things until the same sites were visited again, guess what? yes another new drive has had to be fitted, and the offsprng has been forbidden to visit said sites again. Moral, there are some nasty infections out there still, so how's your spyware/malware/virus protection?

[Dalo Harkin]

so how's your spyware/malware/virus protection?

 

We have said this many times but the best defence againt the above is knowledge, with the above to assist and NOT the other way round.