Is this a hardware or software issue?

[StaggerLee]

So about a week and a half ago, part of my PC was fried by lightning. yay... Thus far i've had to replace the PSU and mobo, and it's finally breathing again. However...

It POSTs ok, no problems in BIOS and the drives all spin and are recognised by BIOS. But when I let it run past the POST the WinXP loading image appears for a split second and the the PC reboots, and it'll do this in a loop until i turn it off.

Didn't have much time to look for a fix until i had to go to work, but can this be a symptom of a fried HD or is it a reaction to the new mobo?

 

[dandragonrage]

Is the new motherboard based on the same chipset as the old?

 

[StaggerLee]

exactly the same mobo, with the same BIOS build.

 

[dandragonrage]

Try Memtest

 

[StaggerLee]

could it be fried memory? will memtest run from a prompt?

 

[NeGrusti]

This is often happening when NTFS driver crashes on some inconsistent metadata (it can be caused also by the failing sectors, but more often it's just a logical inconsistence because of the sudden power failure).
The best check is to connect the drive as a secondary to another computer and see if another Windows can read it or it will crash the same way.

 

[wild0104]

you can also try hitting F8 after it reboots and selecting "Disable automatic restart on failure" -- then you likely will see a BSOD after it starts loading windows and can use that to try and troubleshoot the problem further.