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Computer stuck in an endless restart cycle?

Spiffae

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 17, 2003
Messages
159
Hi,

I booted my second machine today and it started up, got to the windows xp loading screen with the little blue bar that cycles, and after three to four seconds, the machine restarted itself. it then asks me if i want to go to safe mode, if i say yes i get a long screen of drivers loading, and then it restarts. I reset the CMOS jumper and got a long series of beeps and a blank screen, i reseated the RAM and it started up again, i turned off quick POST and it went throught the memory three times, and then booted up, restarting in the same place. what is happening there that is causing my computer to refuse to start? any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks
 
Spiffae said:
Hi,

I booted my second machine today and it started up, got to the windows xp loading screen with the little blue bar that cycles, and after three to four seconds, the machine restarted itself. it then asks me if i want to go to safe mode, if i say yes i get a long screen of drivers loading, and then it restarts. I reset the CMOS jumper and got a long series of beeps and a blank screen, i reseated the RAM and it started up again, i turned off quick POST and it went throught the memory three times, and then booted up, restarting in the same place. what is happening there that is causing my computer to refuse to start? any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Try safe mode a few more times. I went through the restarting thing once, and totally freaked out. After about 8 safe mode attempts, winxp-safe finally booted and I was able to system restore. The last program I ran before I originally restarted was adaware - perhaps some malware or spyware somehow got the best of my system because of the scan.
 
I've seen this happening to quite a few machines at work. So don't panic, its fixable.
First, pop in your XP disk and reboot from the cd drive.. Then run an emergency fix routine.

If it doesn't work.....OK! can you recall what you did before it failed, any software installs? Opening up any email attachments or visiting any porn sites downloading things?

If any....um....a virus/spyware check run sounds natural, isn't it? you know how to boot from a floppy and run the virus check right?

Still no luck... do a clean install of XP ( you won't loose data at this point)

Still? reformat your HD......and I hope you backup vital things frequently
 
xp says partition is damaged - oops.

guess i'll throw my HD into my other computer and see what files i can get off it. i should be okay doing that, right? it won't try to boot off the slave, will it?
 
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