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System wont load

Destro

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 3, 2002
Messages
448
I recently bought a micro-atx Intel based rig to use mainly for
running movies, music and games.

I bought it about a month ago and it ran fine until yesterday,
whenever I start it up, it just reboots. It happens when I'm
seeing the Windows loading screen. After a few seconds the
system just restarts.

Here are the specs:

- micro-atx 865 chipset Intel motherboard
- P4 Northwood B 2.53ghz
- 1GIG (4 x 256) of generic DDR266
- 420w generic power supply
- 60gig Maxtor hard drive
- ATI Radeon 9500 128DDR vidcard

I know the drill about generic hardware, but it was dirt cheap
and I couldnt resist. I've been troubleshooting for a few hours
now with no luck.

I changed hard drive thinking it was a Windows thing with a
spare one that already has Windows on it. No luck.

I took out all the RAM and tried 1 stick at a time, No luck there
either. Same goes when I tried a different video card.

The only thing I couldnt check was the power supply because I
don't have a spare P4 compatible one.

Is there anything I might have missed? Can it be that I have a
somewhat defective mobo?
 
Hehe, I had a feeling it was that.

I just noticed when Windows is about load, there's a weird
click noise coming from it and the fan slows down.

gonna swap it with the Antec in my dually and see.

Hope for the best, Thanks for the tip!
 
This is quite weird...

I hooked up my Antec TP 430w to it, keeping my original hard
drive, and it gave me the exact same symptoms, restarting on
the Windows loading screen.

Now, keeping my Antec in, I swapped hard drives and it loaded
just fine, Windows started to reconfigure it.

From the looks of things, it seems both my orginal hard drive
and the generic 420w power supply are defective. Is it possible
that the power supply skrewed up the files on my hard drive?

Maybe data corruption?
 
Thats very likely. A while back the generic PSU in my brother's system went out and took his hard disk with it. You could be lucky and just have got away with corrupt data or a few bad sectors, however in his case the drive just did the click of death and refused to work again.
 
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