My PC continually resets without even booting

[NCC1701]

Hi there, as the thread title says my computer is stuck in a resetting loop before the first boot screen even comes up. This is the third time it's happened in the last six months, previously I have been able to fix it by pressing both power and reset buttons about 10 times each, figuring one of them got stuck. That didn't work this time, so I tried unplugging the reset button plug attached to the motherboard, still nothing changed. I'm thinking my power supply has bitten the dust after nearly five years, or am I just talking out of my ass?

Any help would be appreciated, here are my system specs if they will be of any use:

AMD Athlon 64 4600+
2 GB RAM
320 GB & 2 TB HDDs
Windows XP
GeForce GTX 480.

 

[ngc7293]

Have you tried running the computer with the Reset button unplugged?

It is hard to imagine what the problem is with such an intermittent problem. If it was 3 times in a month, it might be easier, but 3 times in six months?!? It could be anything from your hardware to your environment.

 

[Brolan]

Does get through the power-on-self-test (POST)? You should hear one, and only one beep. If you hear none, or many, that means a low level issue with the computer.

 

[sojourner]

Power supply or motherboard. If not the powerswitch or reset switch.

 

[Santaman]

Check if all DIMMs are seated properly, also checking out the reset switch might be a good idea, might be halfway stuck.

 

[NCC1701]

Yep, tried it without having the reset button plugged in, exactly the same thing happened. Don't think it even beeped once when starting. Some progress now, I tried starting it again for the first time since yesterday, and it started booting without me even doing anything! Although now a message comes up halfway through the boot saying "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \winhme\system32\config\system.

You can attempt to repair this file by starting Windows Setup using the original Setup CD-Rom".

So that's what I'm doing now, fingers crossed it works. Strange that two seemingly unrelated errors, one hardware and one software, have cropped up in the last 24 hours.

Okay, the repair didn't work, the same message still comes up when I boot up

EDIT: The other bootable copy of Windows XP - I have two copies, the local computer store created a second bootable one the only time I brought it to them - which is the old one that didn't work now works. But because it has seemingly been rolled back to the original installation without the newest drivers I'd really like to get my other copy to work again. What a pain in the ass this is!

EDIT 2: Tried going into my new copy of Windows XP through the menu of the install CD after the repair was done and I got a Bad Pool Caller bluescreen error instead of the usual missing System file.

 

[farmkid]

It sounds like there are some major issues with your computer. It's possible, likely even, that the frequent rebooting from the hardware error caused problems with your Windows installation.

To eliminate the software issues, I would suggest getting a LiveCD or LiveUSB version of your favorite Linux distribution just to get it started to see how the hardware behaves. Once it seems the hardware is okay, you can try to fix the software problems. If it were me, I would probably use Linux to backup all my data, then wipe the drive and start over with a fresh installation of Windows. In my experience, once the OS starts acting as yours is doing, it has enough issues that even if you get it running again, it will be buggy and drive you nuts until you get fed up enough to reinstall, so save yourself the aggravation and do it.

 

[NCC1701]

Apart from when Windows spit the dummy about three years ago my machine has been running flawlessly. As much as I'd like to switch to Linux, a few errors over a 24 hour period after 5 years of heavy use really doesn't seem worth the switch. Like I said, the other bootable copy of XP is all go, if it weren't for the fact I'd have to update it, get new drivers and download new versions of Firefox, Itunes, Winamp etc I'd be using it already. However, if fixing the new copy is going to be more of a pain in the ass than updating the old version, I guess I'll have to make the switch.

 

[farmkid]

I'm not suggesting switching to Linux, just using a LiveCD or bootable USB drive to boot the machine to check out the hardware and/or backup your data. You don't need to install anything just download, burn, boot. If there was a LiveCD version of Windows, I would suggest that, but I'm not aware of any such thing.

A bootable USB drive is more useful, but it's a little harder to make and requires that you have a USB drive you can use for it. It isn't hard, but it's not as easy as downloading an ISO image and burning it to a CD.

 

[Cutter John]

Have we rule dout a hardware problem? I had a similar problem a few years ago, and it turned out to be some bad wiring in the el cheapo case I was using.

Of course I didn't figure this out until AFTER I'd replaced the motherboard and power supply.