XP rebooting

I've come accross this problem twice in the last 12 months and have been unable to solve it, other than doing a clean reinstall of XP. When starting the PC, it goes through the POST, shows the XP start up screen briefly and reboots, goes through the POST again and then into the diagnostic options screen (for safe mode etc). No matter what the option selected, it carries on to the XP start up screen and then reboots, and will repeat this cycle until the second coming.

Funny enough both PC's had clogged up CPU heatsinks and could have overheated. This was confirmed by the 90 degrees plus in the BIOS hardware monitor on both P.C.'s. The problem did not go away even when the heatsinks were stripped, cleaned and re-assembled using new heatsink paste. I had to do back up's and do fresh installs of XP for the PC's.

Any suggestions, as it is a real pain to do the above? Incidentally both P.C.s ran 20% cooler after the heatsink cleanup.

 

I would say the rebooting problem was directly related to the high temps. I'm not real clear on what your question is, but the CPU's may have been heat damaged.

 

I agree that the problem must be related to the high temps. The CPU's were defintely not fried, because ater the heatsink cleaning etc, and reinstallation of the OS, the PC's work 100% and are apparently to this day.

All I want to know is there maybe a better way to solve the re-booting, other than reformatting and reinsatlling the OS?

 

I get it now DUH! You could have tried a safe reload of XP 'over-the-top' of itself. Doing this only replaces the core system files and leaves all your documents, apps, faves, and shortcuts in place; most of the time. It's always a good idea to back up the important stuff before doing a 'safe' reload 'cuz 1 time in 50, you'll run into problems. All your docs and apps will be there but the file associations, desktop settings and shortcuts, and linked files (like needed .dll's for certain apps) get wiped out. So all your stuff is there, just none of it works

hopperdave2000

 

Thanks hopperdave, I'll try that the next time.

 

Sounds like pcs in your environment need regular spring cleaning as preventative maintenance. I see lots of these.
It's possible that you don't need to reinstall at all to fix things, the CPU may well not be the only overheating component. Hard drives are more vulnerable to errors caused by overheating.
A simple chkdsk /f run from the recovery console may well be enough, especially if the stop error code is 000000ED. You can get the pc to halt at the error code by turning off automatically rebbot on error.This is one of the options on the screen you called diagnostic screen, but is offficially called the boot options screen. If it doesn't show on the cycling, restart and press F8.

Studio T