Hwelet Packard re starting all the time?

[tony draper]

Mate of mine got hold of a older Hewlwt Packard desktop a while back,I remember getting a new hard disk for him loading windows ect and sticking it in the machine as the master, original disk is slave,it's been running fine for a year or so,however when he boots up now it goes though is thing until it gets to the Windows XP screen just before it would normally display the desk top shuts down and restarts from the beginning as if the reset button had been pressed.
I've got the machine booting from the original hard disk ok but tis pretty full and exceeding slow,any idea what the problem with the new hard disk could be.
The other prob is that there does not seem to a boot to safe mode option with HP machines? just the boot to bios setup.
Any help gratefully received.
:confused:

[green granite]

Tony have a look through this: HP and Compaq Desktop PCs- Using Microsoft System Configuration (Msconfig) in Windows Vista (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c00819747)

And: HP and Compaq PCs- Windows XP Safe Mode (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&docname=c00013595)

[Mike-Bracknell]

If it's running Windows, then hammering on the F8 key whilst it boots should give you the Safe Mode options.

[tony draper]

Thank you Mr Granite,will try and get it to boot to safe mode tomorrow and try a system restore
I recall having a similar problem but the puter just froze at the same point,think I finished up just formatting the disk and reloading everything.
:(
Hmmm,I tried hitting the F8 key at boot up but the machine is so slow booting I assumed it had not worked and hit F2 for the bios screen will give it more time tomorrow.
Another question,is there another third party defrag utility? dont think the one that comes with windows was meant for 80 gig hard disks,took bloody yonks to defrag a 80 meg disk,must take forever with these newer high capacity disks.
Think the last time I tried with a forty gig I just left the buggah running all night.

[Tarq57]

JKDefrag (http://www.kessels.com/Jkdefrag/) is popular and works well. I'm using the second to last version, which is fine. First defrag will take a while, subsequent much less.

[BOAC]

TD - as M B says, repeated presses of F8 during boot (surely not 'hammering':)) at around half second intervals normally does the job.

[cdtaylor_nats]

1&1 has a defrag utility which works continually and maintains the disk in a permanently unfragmented state