Windows 2000 repeatedly starts up then reboots

[sedacca]

Someone sold me a duff Windows 2000 on eBay and as I was going through the setup, the "starting Windows" screen came up and then rebooted. It nows keeps doing this until I physically pull the power plug out.

I've tried going to the command line prompt and reformatting the boot drive (C, and the system warns me that I will lose all my data (as expected) but then after the format, it still boots up into Windows and reboots.

Any ideas?

 

[azpctech01]

Hello,

What kind of HW do you have? M/B, memory, Processor etc etc etc?

 

[icrf]

how far does it boot? if you're up for 30 seconds or so, you could change the auto-reboot setting and at least get a blue screen, which sometimes offers hardware-specific information that can point you in the right direction.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...but I'm just a C man trying to see the light

 

[sedacca]

In reply to azpctech01:
I'm using a Gigabyte M/B, Duron 1200MHz, 256MB SDRAM, 40GB disk. No problem with hardware as far as I can make out because it will install a good copy of Windows 98 when I replace the duff NT formatted disk.

In reply to icrf:
It boots up OK, then starts loading Windows, when the machine suddenly resets, and the whole cycle starts all over again.

 

[DMFANZ]

Have you tried the last known good profile from the F8 option at startup?

 

[flashmedia]

I had this exact same problem in the field today ...

Symptom,- Win2000 starts, gets to Starting Win2000 then screen goes blank and PC restarts.

This particular machine was being used as server for a small network and had 2 hard disks installed as master/slave.
I removed the second hard disk that was being used as the data drive and left the boot drive in, so I wouldn't damage any data.
Then I turned on the PC and it still did the reboot thing without the second drive.
I replaced the PSU as this was an easy thing to rule out.
It didn't help, in fact it wouldn't even start with a new PSU. So I replaced the original PSU and reseated the network card and the VGA card while I was inside the box.
I then turned it back on again and what do you know, it booted !
I then did three shutdown / restart cycles and all seemed fine, so I reconnected the slave data Hard Disk and it all worked perfectly.
I still don't know exactly what the problem was, whether it was a card not seated properly or whether it was the action of removing the power from the motherboard after I replaced the PSU or what ... all I can tell you is, it now works fine, oh.. and I scanned it for virus as well at this point - none found..
And I can't explain why my "new" PSU didn't work, (perhaps it was faulty, as I hadn't used it before).
This may or may not help you, but it's straight from the field today...
Being pressed for time today I didn't bother trying to get to the bottom of it, but the customer hasn't called yet, (10 hrs later) so I guess it's still running..