pc reboot???

Hi guys, well my sister got a handed down computer and I installed windows xp home after like 10 tries. During the installation the screen would blank out and then continue. I took it for a good thing until I got to installing new components on it. since the audio card was from gateway it didn't work on the computer. The computer is an anthlon 1 ghz. It worked fine while nothing was on there and then one time it checked the hard drive for inconsistency and I let it. It said it deleted some files and it restarted. After a while, I turned it on and when it loaded the windows xp logo, it began to reboot. I turned it off once more and the same thing has been happening since. Any ideas as to what it could be? Thanks again.

Ps. I tried re-installing windows xp but after it gets to the checking hardware part it reboots. I tried a different ide hd and the same thing.

 

Did you check all the system requiremenat for XP? Are there files on the hard drive that you need, if not try to format the drive. If there are, you can try the Recovery Console to repair the system.

 

That's what i'd try at first, if you still can't install xp then there's obviously a hardware issue causing the restart.

 

Thanks, but I installed another harddrive on there to re-install windows xp. Once again it didn't work. What I don't get is how it installed once and then it didn't want to do it anymore.I don't think the recovery console is there. Any other suggestions?

 

I think it may be a hardware fault that maybe just happened to not occur once, causing the install, maybe a memory issue or something.

 

Please post the system specs (ie CPU, RAM, motherboard and any other cards installed).

 

THanks, the CPU is an athlon 1000-MHz, it has 256 mb of Ram at dram 100, it has a AGP card attached to it so the monitor can be plugged into. The mothernoards name I don't know. It's an American Megatrends, so I'm pretty sure it's an ASUS. The model number I am not sure about, in the BIOS it says it has an ID number, the number is (0AAVWP02). It has a dvd player and an cd burner and both are set so that the computer selects what it is. I think that's it. Well here are some pictures in case I messed up.
P.s The middle picture shows two sets of jumpers, the one with the green one I figured out is for the AGP card and is set to normal, the one next to it doesn't have a pin on it. I don't know if that is the reason it shuts off. Thanks for the advice.

 

The specs are OK.

Can you boot into Safe Mode? Do you have the Windows CD?

 

It's not necessarily an Asus, my MSI board uses AMI and the old MSI board was Award. If you can get safe mode then it rules out the hardware issue.

 

Pic 2 shows that you have 2 sticks of ram in there. I have had the exact same issue with XP if the memory is not EXACTLY the same. It would always reboot at the Windows XP boot screen. Pull one stick and try again. If its a go, you will have to get a matched pair of sticks, or just go with one 256 or 512 stick.

Just my $.02

~Rich

 

Yeah, that's one of those things XP may not allow that 98 would.

 

@sammorris

Not true. Not all hardware drivers are loaded in Safe Mode. Read this to better understand Safe Mode:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question575.htm

 

Well that's true, but something that causes a restart even when installing?

 

this is a common problem with pcs
but can also be tedious to fix,to start with these things might be causing it

1 bad ram (heating to much try another ram stick)
2 cpu has hot spot (remove cpu and apply more thermal compound),making sure all EXISTING compound is removed of the heatsink and cpu itself
3 another common problem is this go into bios and put the agp down to 1x sometimes the monitor resolution itself causes these spontanious restarts
4 finally bios needs updating (obtain this from manufactourers website
hope this helps

 

@sammorris

The reason I'm asking if he can get into Safe Mode is because if he can he can run System File Checker. Running that and allowing it to check all Windows system files (replacing what is needed) will allow us to find out if it's a system file or something else. Next step would be to run the Recovery Console from the CD.

Troubleshooting is a step-by-step process. You take one "baby" step at a time until the problems are found. You can't use a blanket and say it covers everything.

 

OK, OK, my bad. I got a little too carried away!

 

@sammorris No problem. We all need to slow down sometimes.

 

Lol so do I, I've been made an Addict!

 

Thanks eliteal, I guess I had a bad stick of RAM and dropping the AGP down also helped. Everything seems to work now. Thanks Everyone who gave me their advice. I knew I could come here for help.

 

You're welcome. Even if it means buying new stuff, there's no such thing as an unsolvable problem (Bite me.... somebody try and find one!)