Topic: Reset during boot phase...

[Anticasper]

Hello people, I have a shity problem with my windows xp machine.

After months of running fine, my machine as of today resets itself while tring to start.

I see the win xp startup screen and just as it is about to show me the login screen it resets itself.

I tried safe mode already ,same thing.

I looked up what my problem could be and it seems to be th following microsoft known problem :

this link at Microsoft

The solution they give me does not work because when I try to boot from the win xp cd rom it hangs, it doesnt reset but all I see is a black screen.

Is there anybody out there who has experienced the same ?

And is there some kind of solution to it ,without losing my 200 gigs worth of movies and music and games ?

Thanks,

AC

PS if you are wondering how i wrote this message, I am using an old sysem I still had lying around.

[ gryphon : edit, fixed the link so you can simply click on it ]

[gryphon]

Are you shure you are booting from CD at that time ?

Sorry for asking, although any corrupt file on your harddrive won't effect the boot from a CDrom, nor would even the hard drive effect it. [ if your IDE controler isn't crashing your computer on random intervals ] You should be able to boot from your CDrom just fine.
If that is not the case, their might be another problem.

Did your system crash last time it worked ok ?

And please don't tell me you have made just one 200gig partition holding both OS and data ?
For Windows that's suicide .. ...

[Atomic Mitten]

Go into your bios and set first boot device to cd rom.
Then insert the xp cd and reboot.
whilst your in the bios check all your settings are correct

[RotteVis]

Try changing memory, could be that one of the banks is faulty

[Anticasper]

Thank you for your interest.

I have about 5 partitions, the c partition is about 10 gig.

The bios settings are correct they have been so at least the last 1 year or more.

The memory has been working fine as well the last year or more.

Its 1 gig of rdram which is normally very stable.

The boot sequence normally works as in raid setup first then cd-rom then floppy drive.

Oh by the way this system has been running fine and very stable the last year or more.

After I had posted this message I left my system off for a night and surprise surprise the next morning it booted as usual no problem to be seen.

Now another day the next morning it shows this problem again.

The system seems to have a life on its own. :-)

So while the system was running yesterday I performed a few tasks and restarted a couple times and hey no problem I was thinking of making a ghost disk but whats the use if my windows configuration is bad?So I didnt make a ghost image.

I am almost thinking in the direction of a cooling problem ?

Because when i left the machine off for almost a day it worked fine afterwards.

And this second time it happens I had left the machine on for the night and did a restart the following morning when it was still warm and then it's not booting again.

Anyway it's hard to see if there is a hardware problem or a software problem

I must admit it's ratling my mind.I have seen a lot of weird things with computers but this fault is very hard to troubleshoot.

Maybe I should try a new install of windows on my c drive, but then I will lose a lot of emails..and this would be no use if it's a hardware problem afterall.

Thanks for the patience and for reading my ramblings :-)

Gegroet,

AC

PS some system information :

Pentium 4 1.8 Abit TH7ii-raid motherboard 4 strips of rdram memory which totals 1 gig memory running on 400 mhz fsb.

2 ibm 60 gig 7200 rpm in a striped raid setup and 1 120 gig western digital storage disk in normal ide setup.

Ehm..a oem audigy card, a radeon 9700 pro vid card..and a plextor cd writer..

Winows xp pro sp1..thats about it..:-)

Edit :Right now I am trying again to boot from the windows cd, as someone mentioned it must be a hardware failure if it doesnt boot from cd.

So now I have the same thing again, I have changed the boot sequence to cd-rom, raid , floppy..

And trying to boot from cd, I get to see the message "windows is checking your hardware configuration "

And next thing the screen goes black and stays black ?

Thanks.

[Hablah]

maybe there's a lot of dust built up in yer cabinet, after being stable for over a year and all...

[Anticasper]

That wasn't a maybe..there was about half a centimeter thick crust of dust between my cpu cooler fan and the heatsink.

Removed it all.Cleaned up the cabinet.Checked hardware connections

But unfortunately the problem persists.

[Anticasper]

It sucks when I do not understand something :-)

After the cleaning up, I watched the news for a bit waited half an hour.

Tried it again the system starts with no problem..sigh.

No error messages nothing.

Guess I will start backing up my email and stuff before it refuses to boot again.

[Hablah]

did u also check if the cooler is actually running smooth when starting up? 'Cause I had an  issue with my cooler once, which seemed to hang once in a while...so after cleaning it thoroughly (which didn't help), moved cooler's power-cable to the 2nd cooler-outlet, --> problem solved....

Could it maybe be due to your RAID? 'Cause I also had RAID f@!#$-up my HD, and even after a low-level format ...still no good..unable to install windows, and also keeps rebooting or hangin'...

[Anticasper]

I really have got no clue what the H is going on, dude.

Never had problems with my raid setup yet.?

[number6]

There are so many possibilitites that it is hard to troubleshoot sometimes. If the problem is intermittent than 9 times out of ten there is some kind of hardware problem. It sounds like you may have a problem with your power supply or a cold solder joint somewhere on your motherboard possibly.

[Anticasper]

Thanks for your input,

This could be true but how do I troubleshoot a small mechanical fault as a cold solder point on my motherboard ?

Is there an app. that is able to check actual motherboard connections ?

Or would I have to test physicly for current on each solder point with a tester ?

Thanks

PS I could try to swap powersupply ,but I would have to get me a new one on monday maybe.

[number6]

You could visually inspect the motherboard for cracked or missing solder joints. That means totally disassembling your PC though and I don't recommend that if you are not comfortable removing the motherboard from the case.  If it is a bad solder joint you could resolder it, but that is also risky if you are not experienced with soldering. What is the make and model of your motherboard?

[Atomic Mitten]

Remove your memory modules all of them and re-seat them. I think your problem is caused by heat creep.
Which means over time the memory cards creep out of their slots.
This is caused by constant cooling and heating of  the electronic components.

You could also re seat your graphics card and sound card too !

Hope this helps

p.s. Did you also check your PSU fan for dust ?

Also run the windows scandisk program, just in case it's a corrupted file issue ?

[Anticasper]

Thanks for the given options.

I do not have a problem with de- assembling the system as i have built it myself from loose components.

I wil have a look at what i can currently do, I will report back later as in tomorrow or something :-)

Thanks again for your attention.:-)

[Anticasper]

Ok at least I have my most important files backed up, so whatever happens from now on I am relativly safe.

[gryphon]

the fact that your RAID device is working fine for over a year doesn't mean it is still ok. Same for your memory. They can go bad. Trying eatch memory stick individually could locate a memory problem.

For the RAID part. I presume you have to equal disks with 5 partitions and the bootsector in the MBR ?
Are you using a RAID 0 or 1 array ?
If you have a RAID 1 try the disks independantly and see what happends. ...

[RotteVis]

Add some casefans, I saw you used RD-RAM modules, I once took one out with a friend who got them also, burned my fingers. What I want to say is that those modules get f**king hot, you need some more airflow in your case.

[Anticasper]

Thanks again for your interest, :-)

It's a striped raid array so Ican't use the disks seperately without losing data.

Indeed those rdram sticks get really hot.Have to think of something there.

I scanned the disks for faults, nothing there.(using the windows scandisk tool)

Still have to reseat the memory, vidcard and audiocard.

I kept the system running for the last 24 hours or more, I'am afraid to shut it down :-)

So thanks for al your suggestions.

See ya,

AC

[gryphon]

not to make you more desperate. . . although the Windows scandisk utilety won't be able to detect faults in your RAID array. .. .

Does your MoBo has an option to check your array ?