pc restarting

colin13

when I boot up my desktop pc,,it dosent boot upo first or 2nd time,,it keeps goingg through the system and then restarting,,any suggestions wot i can do

Taffybiker

Try booting in safe mode. If your screen shows a load of gobbledegook, then the only way I have found to cure this is to reinstall Windows. That being said, there are others who know a lot more than I about these things.

swagman

Try tapping the f8 key repeatedly as the pc tries to start. At some point this should give you a screen which includes the option:
'start using last good configuration' -

in other words you are asking the machine to re-use the settings it used when it last started without problems.

Laz123

Also sometimes this symptom is due to overheating.

Exo

XP has a default setting that causes it to reboot when it encounters a problem.
If the fault persists, then open System Properties / Advanced box / under Startup & Recovery, click the Settings box. In the next window, under system failure, remove the tick from automatically restart and click OK.

This will not resolve your problem, but instead of restarting, your will now be presented with the blue screen error message which may help to identify the cause of the restarts.

el_gringo_3

I'd say overheatings a possibility if you have the tower in an enclosed space (such as a cupboard), but I would expect it to boot up first time, work for a while and then start playing up. Open the side of the PC, connect everything up and turn on - is the fan on top of the motherboards heatsink spinning round?

Another possibility (I think.... can't really remember on XP) is that you have a drive that doesn't exist designated as your boot drive? I'm pretty sure I've seen a PC that would occasionally (I reckon probably after power cuts, although it wasn;t my machine) just revert to the default setting, which was 1. Floppy 2 CDROM 3 HDD - except there was no floppy drive attached. Changing that back so that HDD is at the top would solve it in that case.

But, yeah - do what Exo says before you bother with anything else, that should at least give you more of a clue. It could be about 500 different things!

aliEnRIK

Unplug any external items you dont need (Usb hardrives etc)
My mates just had a windows update and needed this before it booted up (Be interesting to see if mines the same in the morning)