Short story: I’m trying to reinstall WinXP Home on my daughter’s computer off of the install disc I bought about 2 years ago. I’ll get to about where it says “23 minutes remaining”, the comp will shut down, reboot, then say “Restarting setup…”. Lather, rinse, repeat…
Long story, for all y’all detectives: I had my daughter’s comp running XP Home connected to the DSL via ICS from my comp running XP Pro. I decided to dump Windows, and install Linux. Being a Linux newbie, not knowing if or how I could do something like ICS with it, I bought a router. Worked fine for a month or two, till (I think), a lightning induced power surge fried the router. Gigafast kindly replaced the router for free, but then this is when the problem started (though I don’t think because of this). Once my daughter’s comp was back online, I decided to upgrade it to XP SP2. Then intermittently (like whenever my wife or daughter were using it, but not me) the comp started shutting down halfway through boot up. Exact same place- the Windows XP logo would come up, then off. It would do this 4 or 5 times before it would finally boot. 15 to 45 minutes later, again intermittently, it would shut down and reboot.
I tried everything, disconnecting from the internet, anti-virus, uninstalling programs one by one. So I figured I’d try repairing XP from the install disc. I noticed that when the install disc was in the DVD drive, XP would boot up no problem. I “repaired” XP, still no go. I didn’t really want to have to keep the install disc in the drive all the time. What else could it be? Maybe the SP2 upgrade went wrong somewhere. Not wanting to mess with removing the upgrade (I don’t trust “restore” any more than I can throw it), I reinstalled XP and redid all the upgrades. Same prob. I re-reinstalled XP and didn’t do any upgrades. Same prob. Tried to re-re-reinstall, and now I’m at where I described above.
I was thinking it’s a hardware problem, but if so, why would it shut down at exactly the same spot during boot up as before, and during install now? I’d figure a hardware problem would be more random, timewise at least.
Any ideas?
Not really. If the hardware can on ly run for X mins without erroring out, then it’ll only run for X mins during setup or run.
I had a similar problem. It ended up being a bad processor (actually TWO bad processors! hahaha ooooh what fun…) I had tried replacing all of the parts one by one, even the mobo. Replaced the processor but of course I replaced with a bad one. fun fun
Windows does some hardware stuff during boot up, it powers up different bits of the hardware or changes the mode they’re in. If your video card is dodgy then it might be failing when trying to change video mode which it’ll do at a fixed point during both boot and install. Similar with other bits of hardware.
Or you could have a faulty piece of memory somewhere or other that gets used at the same time and everything dies.
Remove/unplug any unnecessary hardware from the machine and install windows fresh onto it. Preferably onto a blank hard drive if you have one spare or can erase the info on the one you’re using. If possible try using a different CD/DVD drive to do the install from too.
There are lots of things that could be wrong but my guess would be that it’s hardware. Also everythings connected and inserted correctly and securely, probably worth checking the bios settings as well in case they’ve got screwed up by something.
Sorry, I’ve probably not told you anything you didn’t know but maybe some of that helps.
Wouldn’t hurt to take a quick look at the capacitors.
Take the side off, and have a look. All the ends should be flat and shiny. No bulging or discoloration.
(They look like AA batteries set on end)
