[Axegrinder]

Hi all

Went round to my aunts house to sort out her pc as it was being slow etc. But i turned it on and it got as far as the windows loading bar then restarted, over and over again. I took the side off the pc and there wasnt anthing out of the ordinary small dust build up on the cpu heatsink which i took care of. Im thinking it may be hardware but im not too sure. Any ideas?

[Dave8282uk]

What o/s is it running?

[Axegrinder]

Windows XP Pro SP2.

[Dave8282uk]

usually random restarts is due to overheating like you clearly stated when you dusted down the h/s/f. had you had windows working at all when you went to your aunts? or was it the first time you booted it up it got stuck in the boot loop?

[Dave8282uk]

It doesnt in my opinion sound hardware related as such, because it would usually crash or reboot in the initial post and it getting further than that. Sounds more software related, have you tried last known good configuration or see if it can boot up in safe mode?

[Axegrinder]

I went on the PC last year and it was all fine, jut got a call recently saying that somthing was up.

I couldnt get into safe mode, kept tapping F8 but then it asked me which device to boot from =S, so i selected the hard disk and it loaded XP normally....then rebooted.

(mods feel free to move this topic into the software section if you think it not hardware related)

[Dave8282uk]

errrm.. off the top of your head can you remember the make and model of the pc? Is there no other options when you tap f8 apart from which device to boot from?

[Axegrinder]

Its a custom built one

Specs are:

AMD sempron 2800+ 1.6ghz
1gig of RAM
128MB club 3D graphics card
ASUS K8V-MX mobo (i think)
maxtor 80GB SATA drive.

And there are no options when pressing F8

[Dave8282uk]

I dont understand why there is no menu when tapping f8. Do you know if there has ever been a menu? Ive come across this in the past with ready made pc's with pre-installed windows, because the manufacturers add extra functions to the menu. but not a custom built. All I can suggest is to do a repair installation, and that way it will keep all your files intact without formatting and having to do a re-installation. Im sorry I could'nt be more help.....

Can anyone else elaborate on this problem???

[Axegrinder]

Or maybe i was pressing f8 at the wrong time, there were loads of post/bios screens. which all went past very quickly.

[Dave8282uk]

Yes perhaps. when you get chance to try it again just keep tapping the f8 as soon as you boot the computer. this could be a virus issue or a defective device driver thats been installed previously, so hopefully when you get the advanced options menu up try the last known good configuration and should hopefully boot up back into windows

[Axegrinder]

Right ok. Ill try that the next time im up there (which will probably not anytime soon). But thanks for the help anyway. I was just trying to get idea on why it would happen.

[Dave8282uk]

No prob... Good luck