Computer keeps rebooting, wont go into safe mode.

Hello geeky friends!


My friend brougt over his computer. He said it would not detect any of the three monitors at his house.

At my house it finds my montor just fine. However. it keeps rebooting windows just before the icons come on the screen.

When it boots up again it does not go to safe mode. F8 does nothing either.

I can run puppy linux live cd just fine, so I think it is a windows software problem.

Any ideas on how to get windows to work?


Pete22

 

XP ? Any new hardware (graphics card for instance) or software (Security Center, firewall, anti virus) added recently? There is fixboot and fixmbr but they may not be the answer, probably need more specifics. Strange it doesn't detect his three monitors but it does yours. Can you mount the drive in question with puppy and have a look around?

 

Virus or rogue toolbar check!

However I don't understand what your friend means by

Please explain further.

 

Hello again,

Oops, sorry I forgot to say that it was XP Home edition OEM version.

Since I wrote, I talked to his wife. When I explained what I saw the computer doing, she said that's what it was doing at home. So I really think the monitor issue was the guy seeing what it said when the computer kept rebooting. While rebooting it would say no computer signal. At least that is my guess.

There was new software added several weeks ago. Avast was added and Avg was removed. CCleaner was added as was AdvanceSystemCare and Obit Defragger.

They also added a usb keyboard because the place to plug in the round type (ps2?) would not work anymore.

I tried a Knoppix 5.1 live cd. I was able read both hard drives. I am not really good with Linux, but if someone can tell me what to do I will try to do it.

It could be malware or a virus but I can't even get in long enough to run any of the programs to find out.

Oh one more thing that I noticed; as it tries to boot up . it says that there is no 80 connection cable installed or something like that. I traded it for a different one, but it made no difference.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Pete22

 

Hi Pete22,

I had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago. Computer would boot up, but suddenly ask for a password, but I don't use one. Every attempt to acces my computer would just make it reboot, even Safe Mode was useless, I couldn't get to my desktop. I did manage to save all my files by putting my HD as slave and use another HD I had lying around (With XP on it) as the new master drive. I chalked it all up to a possible virus/trojan, so I ended up wiping the HD clean and did a complet format/reinstall of XP, just to be on the safe side. I didn't really sweat it cuz I have backups of pretty much everything on usb keys. Like car insurance, you never want to use it...but it's damn good to have. :dancer

Maybe you can use my solution to run an anti-virus on your computer.
Good luck!

 

Hello,

That is an interesting idea. Add a hard drive and then boot and then do the read and run me routine. I'll see if I have a "working" xp hard drive hanging around. (I do have several NOT working ones! ) Nope I don't have an Xp drive that works but I do have a win 2000 hard drive I could use, would that work?

Thanks for the idea!


Pete22

 

Are you absolutely sure about this?

May I suggest that you keep trying ... and keep trying ...
Start tapping the F8 key after you press the ON button, and continue rapidly tapping the F8 key
until (hopefully) you are presented with the "Windows Advanced Options Menu" screen.

If that does work now ...
Use the UP/DOWN arrow keys to select "Disable automatic restart on system failure" and press the Enter key. Your system will attempt to restart normally, but when it crashes, it will not re-start. Instead, you will see a BSOD with error message. Record the error message in full detail, and post in this thread.
-----------

If you can get to the "Windows Advanced Options Menu" screen.....
Use the UP/DOWN arrow keys to select "Safe Mode" and press the Enter key. Log on to the "Administrator" account (leave password blank) rather than your normal user account.

Does the system start successfully in Safe Mode/Admin account?
-------------------

You said: "there is no 80 connection cable installed or something like that"
Please record and supply exact error messages: Otherwise we can only make a guess as to what you may be talking about.

I am going to take a guess here ... since I have investigated possibly the same error message on start-up ...
When you see that message again, it will be referring to the DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive.
Solution: The only one that I have found to be successful, is the replace the CD-ROM drive with another.
Issue: There is an incompatibility, that I was not able to resolve. All the individual hardware items functioned well, but just not all in the one box at the same time, and this could not be resolved by changing the 80 wire IDE cables, no matter how many times it was done.
Edit: I am assuming of course that an 80 wire cable is already being used (and not a 40 wire cable).
--------------

OEM .... ! Make ... ? Model ... ? of the computer.

 

80 wire cables, USB keyboards, PS2 sockets that 'won't work any more'.........what else haven't we been told?

This PC has suffered quite a few hardware changes, no wonder it is complaining.

Check the internal battery condition.
Get a known good PS2 keyboard and mouse, not a remote one and plug in properly.
Go into setup (BIOS) at boot and sort out the initial settings properly.

If you do not know how to do this get professional help or you may make matters worse.

 

Hello folks,


Computer is a Heinz Hound mut built by a local computer company.

I have some good news. Adding a 80 connection cable to the cd did the trick, no more message! Thank you.

I found an Xp drive: it was actual the slave on his system. I removed the other one, and was able to boot and get in to xp home on this one. I thought all was well. Did lots of clean up.

But this morning when I booted up it went to a different background picture and stalled. No icons and could not do anything.

I turned it off. Now it will not turn on at all.

I am thinking of trying a new battery. What do you think?

If I can get it on, I will try checking the bios.


Thanks for all your ideas.

Pete22

 

Did it by any chance have an ASK.com toolbar?