Strange Boot phenomenon

[jgoodman00]

I seem to have a strange problem with a Win2K pro machine. At the time of boot, when it says Starting Windows (with the F8 button displayed). Basically, the progress bar behaves as normal, but when it reaches 100%, the computer restarts. It will not boot into safe mode, command prompt, last known good etc. They all display the same phenomenon.

Nothing has changed since it started doing this, which makes me think some item of hardware is less than perfect. Not sure which though...

Any ideas?

James Goodman MCP

http://www.james-goodman.co.uk

 

[edemiere]

Well, try booting off the CD and doing a 'repair' option to redetect hardware and such to see if maybe a key driver or something got corrupted.

Aside from that, I would try pulling out all the cards except the video card and trying a repair option too and if that works then start adding back cards.

Good luck!

 

[jgoodman00]

I have tried removing all hardware other than the graphics-card. The memory tests fine, but it still doesnt boot.

It looks to be failing somewhere between the hardware detection & the kernel load stages, but I still dont know what the exact cause is...

James Goodman MCP

http://www.james-goodman.co.uk

 

[wolluf]

To add to edemiere's good advice - you could try a repair reinstall - boot from 2k install CD, choose new install, then when it finds installation, it will offer repair (type R). Take this option. Should leave data, settings, apps as is, but will lose windows updates.

But if it is hardware, you will still need to identify and replace the problem item.

 

[jgoodman00]

To add to edemiere's good advice - you could try a repair reinstall - boot from 2k install CD, choose new install, then when it finds installation, it will offer repair (type R). Take this option. Should leave data, settings, apps as is, but will lose windows updates.

But if it is hardware, you will still need to identify and replace the problem item.

Tried this as well. The problem remains. I think it must be a problem with one of the key pieces of hardware; it happened a few months ago, & the only solution was a complete format/reinstall...

James Goodman MCP

http://www.james-goodman.co.uk

 

[netwalker1]

I think it's a graphic problem ,, try to replace the VGA card and test

Mohamed Farid
Know Me No Pain , No Me Know Pain !!!

 

[danomac]

It is possible that your RAM may have a bad segment. I had this problem about a year ago (rebooting while loading, rebooting while trying to repair (when I could get that far)). It took me a while swapping all sorts of hardware. You may want to get memtest

http://www.memtest86.com

and run it on your machine.

After I did this, I found out that my RAM had fried. Replaced it and all was good.

and like netwalker said, try to get a plain PCI video card and install it and try it again.

Daniel.

 

[nidash]

i am also facing the same problem, i have tried other harddrives, vga cards, memory, but nothing seems to work. i had this problem earlier with similar pc then i installed win98.

will be great if someone sheds some light on this.

nida

 

[netwalker1]

possible cases :
- You all said that the Progress is complete ( 100 % )
this means that it hangs or restart when it is trying to start the graphical mode ,,,
So The Problem is in :
- The VGA Card
or
- The RAM which is trying to access the VGA Area
or
- The Hard disk , which contains the data which will be loaded on the Memory ..

I assume that the VGA card is the problem,, and I am thinking that the RAM is not the problem ,,,
The Location of the data on the hard disk may be curropted ,,

So , try to replace the VGA , then tell us what will happen ?

Mohamed Farid
Know Me No Pain , No Me Know Pain !!!

 

[danomac]

To clarify... the mobo itself can have a bad DIMM socket or something that can cause memory errors. The RAM itself may still be okay.

If the RAM is okay and the mobo DIMM socket is bad, you will get a lot of errors running memtest.

Also, swapping ram will not help as the mobo still can't access it properly.

Daniel.

 

[netwalker1]

danomac:
This means that switching to another plat form will not solve it also ?



Mohamed Farid
Know Me No Pain , No Me Know Pain !!!

 

[danomac]

At one point I had an ECS mobo that had a bad socket. I could install Windows 98 but not Windows 2000.

Windows 98 would install and run, every once in a while would hiccup somewhat.

W2K wouldn't install at all. The DOS portion worked fine, but as soon as windows would try to load the graphics part of setup... crash.

Memory problems like this I hate. I have had two computers with really weird problems... one was just bad ram, and the other the mobo socket was toast (I always got error messages from the same segments/offsets.)

Daniel.