My daughter's computer won't boot up anymore. According to her, the computer crashed (possible virus as she described a series of windows that opened that could not be closed) so she powered the PC off. Now when powering on, the power light comes on and the fan can be heard, then it seems to immediately shut off then power on again about twice every second. I even tried removing the BIOS jumber on the main board to force the BIOS recovery startup, but it still does the same thing. Any suggestions?
2006-10-22 14:06:12 · 8 answers · asked by Rob 6 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Desktops
Most BIOS jumpers don't reset it by just removing it, in fact I've yet to encounter one that has. You have to usually place it over pins 2 and three to reset it and its on Pins 1 and 2 to keep it handy. But this problem is suggestive of 3 things in this order.
1) RAM: A stick is REALLY bad. I would say Power Supply, but I'll discuss that next. If your Mem is bad then your POST could be forcing the restart because it couldn't even load into memory. You might try pulling one stick at a time out and trying to boot it and see if that fixes it. If you only have one stick thats a hard thing to test as you won't get anywhere by pulling that one out.
2) Power Supply: That bugger can cause the weirdest issues that you would swear had to be the Motherboard or the RAM. If voltage fluctuates even for a nano-second, there goes what you had loaded into RAM. If you try pulling RAM and /or swap in a known good stick and don't get anywhere, trot down to a Computer parts store and spend 40 bucks on a new PSU-its the cheapest of the three options.
3) Motherboard: If the Memory doesn't fix it even with a new module, and the Power Supply didn't do it, then your Mainboard is toast somewhere along the line. That would explain the lock up with windows and the restarts. If its this one and its more than 2 years old, I'd suggest your daughter is getting a new comp. Older Intel and especially AMD boards are getting scarce and usually not worth what you might find them for new.
Even if she got a virus it wouldn't cause it to immedietly restart on boot-It would give you an Error such as Boot Disk not Found, NTLOADR Missing, Corrupt Partition, etc. But your immediate reboot doesn't even sound like its getting to the Hard Drive...though you might want to check all the cables...a improperly seated IDE cable might occasionally connect and cause wierd issues.
I don't suspect overheating because an overheat usually causes it to just shut off...as does a Power Supply issue...thats why I didn't say it was first most likely. Good Luck
2006-10-22 14:33:09 · answer #1 · answered by Jonathan O 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Does it stay on long enough to access the BIOS? If it was a HD crash, you would at least be able to access that. If it is immediately shutting down after power up, I suspect a hardware problem. It may be heat related so clean the power supply, the processor heatsink and all the fans. Let it cool for about an hour and try it again. If it does the same thing I would suspect a fried power supply or processor.
2006-10-22 21:18:24 · answer #2 · answered by vanman2u 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Your virus, crashing or whatever has messed up critical files that windows needs to boot properly when the boot fails it automatically reboots.....
But the issue could be a bad power supply or the cpu overheating. check all internal fans
2006-10-22 21:11:38 · answer #3 · answered by Fremen 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
try using the operating system disk to boot from and try to boot up in safe mode run any virus software try to clean it at least you havent gotten a no operating system error if you have a pc could try hooking up her drive to yours as a slave and clean it of anything
2006-10-22 21:12:01 · answer #4 · answered by halicon2000 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If your computer hangs or reboots while you are working on it, it could be a problem with device drivers, hardware or software. This problem can be solved by uninstalling new softwares, updating device drivers and making minor configuration changes. Detailed instructions at http://tinyurl.com/yk5zpr
2006-10-22 21:08:21 · answer #5 · answered by regaa 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
You may be having a virus. Norton, AVG , Avast are
widely used and effective antivirus software. You can
download these free softwares at
http://tinyurl.com/yahtjk
2006-10-23 09:23:26 · answer #6 · answered by PAPU 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
take to service center. power problem
2006-10-22 21:19:21 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
you could have spy-ware
2006-10-22 21:20:39 · answer #8 · answered by T.O. 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋