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PC reboots on Windows XP splash screen

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OverclockNStein

Member
Joined
Sep 30, 2002
Location
New England
PC reboots after POST! (BX-133 RAID)
I have spent a week trying to get my old PC back up and running to sell to a friend, but I'm having trouble figuring out whats wrong with it.

1st the PC was running fine, until it started to reboot right at the start of the Windows XP splash screen (where the Windows XP logo fades in and the little blue bar below it shows you it's doing something), but after it rebooted, it would run fine, no problems.

After time, the rebooting has gotten worse, it would reboot 3 or 4 times, then get into windows...but in windows, it would reboot as soon as 5 minutes in, or as long as an hour.

Finily, it just wants to reboot and not load the OS at all.

Things I have tried to solve the problem:

* Completely taken apart the PC, clean it and put it back together.

* whiped out the harddrive, re-partitioned it, formated it, Fresh install of XP (still rebooted at splash screen. [tried NTFS and FAT32]

* tried (4) different sticks of ram

* moved harddrive to RAID controller (IDE3)

* Replaced video card (Geforce 2 GTS to TNT2 Ultra)

* removed sound card + Eithernet card

* Ran Norton to scan boot sector of harddrive

* dug up an old 6 gig harddrive that had Win98 on it. After a couple reboots to setup harddware, it would boot into windows 98, but it would reboot 1-2 minutes in.

* took that harddrive and re-partitioned it, formated it, installed XP, and this time I was able to see the splash screen for a good 5 seconds before a reboot.

* tried a different power supply.

* moved cards around to reduce a IRQ conflict

* F$cked around with the BIOS a bunch (overclocked it while i was there )

* Flashed the BIOS to new "72"

* and a couple other minor things that I cant think of at the top of my head.

PC does not reboot while in BIOS or while in DOS

I dont have an extra Socket 370 CPU kicking around, thats next on my list. Other than that, I'm lost, could use some feedback.


System Specs:

Abit BX-133 RAID
P3 750 (7.5*100)
448 MB PC133 RAM (256+128+64)
Creative Labs Geforce 2 GTS (AGP)
Soundblaster Live 5.1 (PCI 3)
Linksys 10/100 Net (PCI 1)
 
looks like you have tried alot of stuff...

have you looked at your psu? whether its overheating or got unstable lines or what have you - mebbe your processor is similary overheating - try underclocking it or improving cooling (depending on temps)
 
I'd suspect the PSU or motherboard. Chech the motherboard's capacitors, and see if they're bulging at the top and/or if anything is leaking out of them. Abit bought a lot of faulty capacitors a while back, some of them may have been used on your board. Another thing to check is your power supply. If you have a spare one kicking around, or if you could borrow one from a friend for a few hours.
 
Try this, may shine some light:

Edit your boot.ini file so that after fastdetect it says /SOS

So it looks something like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows XP" /fastdetect /SOS

DO not change anything except after /fastdetect
it should be /fastdetect /SOS

then save and reboot, and see where it is hanging
this change will get rid of that blue bar and you will see what is loading and hanging

Hope this helps
 
sounds like a plan turd, hope i can do that through DOS, i will also inspect my motherboard's capacitors too and gona get my hands on a celeron 533 for a day, so I hope to solve this this week
 
ElGriton said:
That sure sounds like a video problem to me. I see that you changed the video card once but it was with another nvidia card. Try something else.

im with you, sounds like its not getting enough volts, maybe its a 2.0 card and the mobo is only 1.0? try the aprtures size, turn off fastwrites, etc...
 
I completely agree with the post about the capacitors...my BE6II just went 6 feet under due to the capacitors being bad, abit boards have been plagued by this...

Mine did the exact same thing, would boot up..but then restart out of nowhere after a brief time in windows...but would be fine under dos and in the bios screen for HOURS.

I'm still currently trying to get new caps to replace the ones that are bad, they are a pain in the you know what to find...but i'll bet that is exactly what it is.
 
The winner is: PsycoPhreak and CrystalMethod ! bling bling bling!, tell them what they won!...

One of the Capacitors near the AGP slot (3 of them in a row) was bulged with orange-rusty looking liquid on top of it. Dead motherboard. Was bought January of 2001 so I almost got 2 years out of it.

two_dope2000 was way off :)
 
Motherboard isn't really dead, if you want to save it, all you have to do is find the same value caps as the ones that are bad and replace them...that's what i'm doing to my BE6II...I should just toss it in the garbage seeing i'm no longer a fan of Abit, I've had nothing but problems with boards I've gotten from them in the past.



EDIT: after going through my parts box...I found 2 socket 7 motherboards that have the caps i need..heh heh...who says keepin old parts is a waste of space!!!
 
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