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WinXP reboot loop

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8 replies

by jdclyde

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I have a Dell Optiplex 160L, running WinXPSP2 Home edition.

You get to the Windows login screen, and select the user.

It makes the windows boot sound, and you start to see the desktop. It then logs back off before any icons appear and your back at the login screen.

Booting to safe mode doesn't help.
Booting to last known good doesn't help.

I booted to a windows xp disk, got to the repair and was able to boot to the partition. Ran the fixboot and fixmbr, but didn't make a difference.

Any ideas? If possible, I would rather fix this instead of format so I could learn more about xp. It is a personal system, and I am not concerned with the data, just would like to know how to fix this BEFORE I one day have to try it on a work system. If I pooch it while trying to fix it, no biggie.

Thanks.

jd

8 replies

by rob miners

is try to disable automatic restart. You may be able to do it from the Safe Mode Menu. This should give you a Blue screen.

Second thing to check is RAM. Mismatched or Faulty RAM will cause these symptoms.

There was a Virus doing the rounds that would also give these symptoms.

Anyway food for thought.
Rob

by jdclyde

My one boy does a lot of the myspace crap and wouldn't really be surprised if it ends up being something from that.

Will have to get a bootable AV disk and run a scan, huh? Any recommendations?

I will also try swapping out the RAM. Didn't really suspect that, as I figured bad ram would blue screen or lock, not reboot, but I have an extra stick and it is an easy check.

I know it isn't mismatched. It is a single pc2100 stick. 512 I believe. It had two, but when it "died" I moved one of them over to this systems twin. (evil twin? Maybe... :D ) That system is running fine, so that stick wasn't the problem.

by rob miners

command line Scanner and ClamWin Portable are two of the AV's that I use. Spybot 15 can be installed on a good PC and and the contents of the install folder can be copied and it will run from CD or a memory stick.

It would be quicker to do what crtservices has suggested.

I notice in the specs that the PC only has a 200 or 250Watt PSU. Have you added any extra hardware?

I only found out about the mismatched RAM the other day when a client brought around two PC's for me to have a look at. Both suffered from the same symptoms, talk about evil twins. One was AMD the other Intel. No Blue screen or beeps. I removed a stick from one and viola it started performing so I did the same to the other one and low and behold problem solved.
I have started to install and add the recovery console to the Boot.ini for quicker access.
Afterthought.
You could try putting the drive in the Evil Twin and try again if the twin is identical.

by jdclyde

While it did find and fix a few things, it did not change this.

Looks like I will be trying an inplace install and see where that takes me (courtesy a peer from Col)

by jdclyde

The other suggestions didn't do it, so I went to do the repair install, but didn't have that option available.

I went with the option to install in the same directory. Will double check for any data that needs backing up, and then will wipe and reload from scratch.

Thanks for trying folks.

jd

by gary56789

install the drive as a slave in a good PC and run your virus/spyware scans, deleting anything found? Then retry in the old PC.

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