Computer fails to boot up

[Justjim]

Win XP Home, 512 Ram, Gateway KTH300SE Desktop, 1.3mh

My son's computer fails to boot up and shuts down as soon as the Windows screen appears.
I've checked all of the wires/connections and even started up the computer in safe mode bt it shuts down and tries to reboot everytime it's turned on.

I recently ran virus scan, adware, malware etc and know that the computer is not infected.

Can anyone help me with this problem?

Thanks for your help.

[Coco]

Well, this depends a little on what you mean by windows screen. If it's actually loading windows such as a login screen and shutting down it could be a software problem.

A quick and easy way to check if it's software related is to grab a copy of knoppix. It's a free linux distro. You just put a CD in the system and it should boot to a linux desktop. If it does that, odds are your HW is fine and something is messed with the windows config. If it crashes when you try that, it means it's a HW problem. Perhaps an over heating power supply, video card or CPU.

[zephra]

Remove all cd's if any from cd-roms.Can you boot in safe mode?Hit F8 when the splash screen appears at boot

[Justjim]

Thanks. I can't even get to the login screen before it shuts down and restarts. I'll try to get a copy of the CD mentioned.

I've tried everal times to start insafe mode but again the coputer shuts down before I can do this.

If I find a way to keep it going I'll try a system restore but I have not added or deleted any programs lately that may have caused this.

I'll also try to boot from the XP cd and do a repair again bt I have not been successful so far.

[asturnacle]

justjim;

if u can remove the bad hard drive and set it to slave and boot it on another machine, run chkdsk and defrag and look at it and run anothe virus scan and see what the results are after that.

asturnacle