PC Will Knott-Boot

[DeepC]

Sorry for the pun in the title.....

My PC is seriously misbehaving. It is an AMD Athlon 1700+ running Win XP SP1 with 512MB Ram. Last week it decided that it would not boot. It spools up and rund through the memory scan up to 64K it then reboots and does the same thing again and again and again ........

It persisted in doing this however many times I turned it off and on again. I took the cover off and cleaned out the dust accumulated. I removed and reinserted the RAM and checked all the plugs and connectors were tight. When it still did not work an in a moment of frustration I gave the case a few sharpish whacks on the side and walked out the room. When I returned some hours later I switched on the PC and it all worked perfectly.

Fast forward to last night. Same thing happens. It will not boot correctly for love nor money. I gave up and went to bed. When I got up this morning I tried the switch and low and behold it works perfectly.

Any ideas what could be happening??

Cheers

DeepC

[amanoffewwords]

One possibility:

The hard-disk may be suffering from stiction (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/stiction.html) - the cure for which is to extract the hard-disk, leave it connected and twist it sharply in a particular direction while it is booting. But I wouldn't recommend doing that unless you know what you're doing.

More info in this PDF document (www.howtorecoverdata.com/ library/hard-drive-stiction.pdf )

Charles

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

DeepC,

How far into the boot process does the computer get to before rebooting?

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. As Charles says, it might be time to look at getting a new Hard Drive.:(

[Lost_luggage34]

Interesting reading Charles and certainly a new one on me !!

[Oracle]

Hi,
Several of the nasteir viruses, worms and trojans currently doing the rounds of all our email attachments will cause this problem if the hard drive gets sufficiently infected.
Unless you can boot sufficiently long to run a floppy with a virus removal tool like "stinger'' (free download at www.mcafee.com), you may have to recourse to using another hard drive unit (with antivirus software installed) to boot your computer, with the normal hard-drive installed as SLAVE hard-drive. This will allow you to scan the old hard drive for virus infections and remove them using stinger or standard programmes obviously updated!). Following this, the old hard drive should reboot normally. In severe cases of nasty infection, it might be necessary to completely reformat your odf hard drive with WIN XP SP1/2 - or, if it will do so, just re-run the XP disk on a repair basis. Wither way, whenever you have finished this, and to ensure you have removed all viruses etc, you will need to select PROGRAMME RESTORE function OFF (tab in SYSTEM file of Control Panel)and rescan as many of the newer nasties hide a copy of themselves behind your system restore 'wall'and reinfect the hard-drive on the next boot. Such joy!
The secret is - always install and maintain up to date anti-virus software and run it frequently. Also NEVER open email attachments from senders you don't know!
Hope this helps!

[DeepC]

When I hit the switch it spools up and then switches the Monitor on. It then counts to 64K, beeps and dies.

It does not get to the bios entry screen and therefore there is nothing I can do with the keyboard to stop the process.

I think Charles has hit the nail on the head. It is weird though as the computer is used daily and left for a maximum of about 18 hours between uses.

I got it working this morning and it is still running so I'll play with it tonight.

The Hard Drive was replaced 18 months ago. It looks like it needs to be replaced if it is the problem. Would be well worth backing up as much data as possible now.

Is there any 'ghosting' freeware out there which would help me replicate the data onto a new drive?

DeepC

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

DeepC,

That sounds more like a Mobo problem than a Hard Drive problem.

Try disconnecting the Ribbon from the back of the Hard Drive and see if you can duplicate the problem. (That will eliminated the Hard Drive as the issue if you can duplicate it.)

You could also put in a Boot Disk in the Floppy Drive.

Take Care,

Richard

[DeepC]

The PC seems to be booting normally again. Last night I found a loose cable which might have caused some problems with the start up. I think that the data lead to the CD-RW D: Drive was half in/half out and therefore corrpting comms to that drive. On boot up this was probably sending spurious signals back to the PC.

Last weekend I tried to cut a disk and it was corrupting every CD I tried to write. This weekend the drive was not even showing in Windows Explorer. I took the case of and found the wire dangling even though I had 'checked' that it was all in place earlier in the week. I guess that it was not properly pushed home.

Does the above scenario with regard to spurios signals sound feasible?

DeepC

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

DeepC,

Any IDE Cable not completely in can cause the problem. One of the first things I check on comps with problems is the ribbons. It saves a lot of troubleshooting in the long run and has fixed many a computer I have been called out to repair. :ok:

Take Care,

Richard

[DeepC]

I think with the aid of Evesham's Tech Support line I have solved the problem. They reckoned that all my PC woes were caused by the build up of Static Electrickery on the hardware in the case. They suggested that I unbpugged the PC and hold in the 'go' button for more than 20 seconds. This was to bleed the static which was obviously interfering with everything.

Did what they said and it now works.

Weird.

DeepC

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

DeepC,

Glad to hear you solved the problem. :ok:

Take Care,

Richard

[DeepC]

now this is really really annoying me.......

I fitted a new hard drive as part of my Lightning Surge episode. My computer has been working very well since then and it is faster loading and all applications seem to run faster.

Last night my wife accidentally switched off the surge protected adapter and therefore the PC. She immediately rebooted and all worked ok. We then used the PC all evening and switched off about 10pm. At about 11:30 I heard the whirring and beeping of the PC (My PC is prone to randomly booting in the middle of the night. It has been since I took it out of the box 2.5 years ago. ) . I went into the room and it was cycling through the 'count to 64k, beep and repeat' problem.

Is there anyway I can isolate which component is causing the problem?

DeepC

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

DeepC,

Is there anyway I can isolate which component is causing the problem?

Do you mean the random booting in the middle of the night or the constant checking of the RAM?

Take Care,

Richard

[DeepC]

Sorry my post was a bit ambiguous

I meant the cycling through the Graphics Card memory check. The PC is unusable. The other problem is weird but at the moment I'd be grateful if the PC would just boot correctly no matter what time day or night!

Cheers

DeepC

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

DeepC,

It sounds like the power cuts damaged the OS. I would first try to boot into Safe Mode. If that does not work, I would try:

Boot from the WinXP CD, then go into Recovery Console. Type from the C Prompt:

chkdsk drive /p /r

/p : Does an exhaustive check of the drive and corrects any errors.

/r : Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.

If that does not work, you can always do a repair with the WinXP CD. ;)

Take Care,

Richard

[DeepC]

Richard,

I'll try your suggestion when I get home tonight but I think it will be unsuccessful as it was doing it before I had the lightning surge. I am now booting of a brand new hard drive with a clean install of Win XP fully updated to SP1 with all critical updates.

Still. Optimism reigns......

DeepC

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

DeepC,

Fingers crossed. ;)

Take Care,

Richard

[spannersatcx]

I had something similar a while back and it was the power supply unit that was knackered, replaced it and it was fine. If you have another pc see if you can swop them round to see if it still happens.