Restarting computer


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Old 11-13-08, 05:02 PM
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Restarting computer

I have a fairly old computer. It has a 1 ghz processor with 256 MB ram.

It keeps restarting continuously. It will show up to my desktop, but not long enough to use the computer.

I am running Windows XP.

Does anybody know why this is happening and how i can solve it ?
 
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Old 11-14-08, 03:58 AM
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How far does it get into the boot sequence? Can you hold the F8 key while it's booting and get into Safe Mode?
 
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Old 11-16-08, 02:26 PM
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Originally Posted by tdbn1
I have a fairly old computer. It has a 1 ghz processor with 256 MB ram.

It keeps restarting continuously. It will show up to my desktop, but not long enough to use the computer.

I am running Windows XP.

Does anybody know why this is happening and how i can solve it ?
If you manage to get into safe mode as Rick mentioned, then try and restore back to an earlier day or month as you may have something corupt in your registry. (Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore)
 
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Old 11-19-08, 06:33 AM
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Originally Posted by Rick Johnston
How far does it get into the boot sequence? Can you hold the F8 key while it's booting and get into Safe Mode?

I have a similar problem with one of my computers. It has WinXP Pro and since the primary hard drive is full it keeps on restarting itself. Can't get to safe mode.

I have WinXP disk. It is not a XPPro. Would it help to reinstall the operating system or somehow fix it?
 
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Old 11-19-08, 08:14 AM
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My computer was restarting a lot also. I took the cover off and with a flashlight noticed the fins behind the fan were covered with what looked like brown spiderwebs. I disconnected the power cord and used a dry q-tip to clean these fins. Some was still deeper embedded so I used the compressed air in a can to blow this debris out of the fins. Then with a damp cloth I cleaned the fan blades (front and back sides) and finally blew out the entire machine with the canned air. No more problems. Really suprized me how much stuff was in there.
 
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Old 11-19-08, 09:33 PM
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Originally Posted by tulihk
I have a similar problem with one of my computers. It has WinXP Pro and since the primary hard drive is full it keeps on restarting itself. Can't get to safe mode.

I have WinXP disk. It is not a XPPro. Would it help to reinstall the operating system or somehow fix it?
If you have another computer, hook up this hard drive as a slave device, then you can do some house keeping, on it.

If your hard drive is full, reinstalling over the current OS may cause problems as XP needs a certain amount of space to install it's temp files.

Backup what you need off that drive, try removing some files to free up space, re-install the drive as master and try booting it up in safe mode. If that works, then it is just a matter of doing more house keeping. If not, then I would recommend that you re-format the drive and do a fresh install of the operating system. Just remember to back any data prior to formatting the drive.
 
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Old 11-22-08, 09:01 AM
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I tried installing as a slave drive on another computer. The computer does not recognize it. It only showed one of the drives.

The problem with this drives is that it was 10GB drive. Windows and other softwares have used all of the space with upgrades. If I could somehow get computer to recoginze it, I can then delete some of the JAVA updates and freeup space. When I turn the computer on, it keeps on going into Windows restarting mode. It won't let me restart in safe mode to delete the files.
 
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Old 11-22-08, 10:33 AM
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Originally Posted by tulihk
I tried installing as a slave drive on another computer. The computer does not recognize it. It only showed one of the drives.

The problem with this drives is that it was 10GB drive. Windows and other softwares have used all of the space with upgrades. If I could somehow get computer to recoginze it, I can then delete some of the JAVA updates and freeup space. When I turn the computer on, it keeps on going into Windows restarting mode. It won't let me restart in safe mode to delete the files.
When you hooked up the drive on the other computer, did you change the jumper on the drive to slave? If so, did you go in to the BIOS and see if you have both, the master drive and slave drives? If not, then you may have to do a manual detection. You could also leave it as a master drive and connect it to the secondary IDE port on your mother board (if you have 2 IDE Master ports). Also try a different ribbon cable.

On its own, what happens when you go into the boot menu (F8) and select "disable automatic restart on system failure".
If it dumps you into a command prompt, then perhaps you can do some deleting by using dos commands.
 
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Old 11-27-08, 06:58 PM
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might sound stupid, but are you using a PCI graphics card? It could be that. I had this prob on a pc once. it would boot get so far and then reboot. but it wouldnt be all the time at the same time. I put it down to overheating.

Try open pc case and point a big fan into case and see. It will be a hardware issue tbh, Im sure normally if its a software issue you normally get errors or blue screen crashes.

Worth a try.

My thoughts are graphics or memory issues. tho memory can cause blue screen errors too

Paul
 
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Old 11-28-08, 09:14 PM
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... if its hardware - yer prolly looking at psu.


i would start by backing up everything and reinstall the os.

if problems restart random replace the psu.
 

Last edited by Rick Johnston; 11-28-08 at 11:06 PM. Reason: Removed off-topic comment
 

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