Infinite reboot

[peter123123123]

Hello, I leave my PC on all the time and yesterday i came home to find it'd over-run on ram, which happend oftenly. I restarted and ever since then my PC would say it's having hardware problems and give me options: start normally, start from last known working system configs, safemode etc. When i select any of these my PC just restarts.

I've gone on the windows website and followed a tutorial on how to repair win xp, but the instructions don't match what's on the screen. But i don't think this is the problem as i've tried a different hard drive and i'm getting the same error.

Does anyone know how i could find the hardware which is malfunctioning?

[Coreper]

you can easily make a Windows XP boot disk, using BartPE

here is a tutorial about how to do it:

Link to the tutorial

[peter123123123]

I said it wasn't anything to do with the OS..

[-pops-]

Possibly a RAM failure. How many sticks of RAM do you have installed?

If more than one, remove all but a single stick and try booting. If you still have the problem, remove that stick and put another in its place (it's unlikely more than one stick has failed). If you have only one stick, try and borrow one of the same type and test that.

[peter123123123]

I have 2 sticks. I took them out and tested one by one; put them in eachothers slots but still the same result. Could this mean my motherboard's broken?

[-pops-]

It's always difficult to diagnose this type of hardware problem without having the machine in front of you.

Something you could try is to disconnect all non-essential peripherals (floppy drives, optical drives etc.) and try booting.

Another thing would be to check the BIOS. Disconnect the hard drive(s). You should then be able to get into the BIOS and check that everything is OK there -or check in the motherboard manual for instructions on accessing the BIOS - even so, disconnect non-essentials.

[peter123123123]

What should i be doing in the BIOS? There's no 'testing' feature. The only thing it monitors is the CPU temperature.

[peter123123123]

I tried my PC's hard drive on another computer and i got the same error. So i think it could be the hard drive after all. Now the problem is when i use the xp cd to repair it, i can't because the option isn't here. i followed this tutorial and it says it can't copy those 2 files for some reason.

This would explain a lot as i suspected the hdd got dust in because it was making funny noises. So i'm going to buy a new hard drive and see if that works. Unless i should try something else?

[-pops-]

The BIOS would tell you details of all the inner workings of the machine but, that seems irrelevant now as you appear to have determined that it is a fault with the hard drive.

If it is showing these effects AND making incorrect sounds, it does seem likely that the drive has come to the end of its useful life.

I assume you don't have a backup of your system. This is something you may consider making when you are up and running again.

[Coreper]

you said the hd got dust in it, but thats almost impossible:

hd's are vacuum sealed

so if you want dust to get in, the hd should have been open, which destroys the hd [well, it doesnt destroy it, but it doesnt work anymore, since it wont run fast enough when it isnt sealed anymore]

your hd probably died of age... [or violence :P]

[peter123123123]

Yep, the hard drive broke, installed a fresh copy of xp on another 40GB hdd and it all works. Now all that's left to fail on my Dell is my cd rom which won't open 90% of the time.

Thanks for all the help.