Random reboots at W2K startup--power issue?

[Lord Sandwich]

This is driving me nuts.

A few days ago my Win2K system suddenly started rebooting during the startup sequence. At first it'd only do this once or twice, but now it's gotten so bad as to reboot over ten times, sometimes even before the logo pops up.

The problem hardly ever occurs after booting successfully, but it has happened twice--once during a Win98 session. Also, the latest McAfee DAT reports no viruses anywhere, so I suppose that isn't it.

Could this be a power or power-supply issue? I've had problems with them in the past but nothing quite like this. :confused:

[da franksta]

probably bad psu or bad ram. to make sure it's not a software problem, i'd recommend a total reinstall of w2k. if the rebooting remains, swap psu and ram with another pc (surely you have a friend who wouldn't mind you screwing around with his modules ;) ).

[Lord Sandwich]

Hi da franksta,

I swapped in my friend's PSU, and still got the same results. :scared: And I haven't completed the MemTest run yet, but so far my RAM module doesn't seem to have any problems.

At this point it looks like either the motherboard's faulty, the hard drive's giving way, or a boot sector virus is buried somewhere in there. I'm leaning towards the third possibility since I wasn't having any problems until I installed some new stuff, but that doesn't explain why the system boots more consistently after warming it up.

Needless to say I'd much rather be tinkering with XviD options than all this crap. :)

[zub144]

Did u try to boot into safe mode? If so could u boot all the way and access event viewer? Try it next time and look in the Application and Event logs.

[Lord Sandwich]

Turned out my two-month-old mobo shorted out, because everything worked once I swapped in another one. It's times like these when I'm really overwhelmed with love for technology. :rolleyes: