Help with boot loop

Hi guys,

I dug an old PC out of my garage and wanted to put it to use. So, I plugged it in and everything seemed OK but after a couple hours it powered doen and turned itself off. So I restarted it and it seemed to work OK for awhile and then when I left and came back it had turned itself off again. OK, so I restarted it and midway through the reboot it turned off. Then I restarted it again and it started and worked fine so changed some of the power settings in WindowsXP so it will just stay on and not power down (or tired to) and when I returned it was off again.

I left it aside and forgot about it for a few weeks. Today I turned it on and it is stuck in a reboot loop restarting over and over and isn't loading Windows and because it loops so quickly I can't even get into safemode.

As soon as is started the screen reads the following (for about ~5 seconds) as it counts up to 0.64 RAM

Win Force Gforce2 Max VEGA BIOS V09.11.2002
Copy write 2000 - 2005 LeadTec Research Date: 09.11.2002 (V7.2)
064.0 MB RAM


www. leadtech.com


Then it goes to a blue screen with a picture of the Intel P4 Logo that says Intel Pentium4 Inside

If the keyboard is unplugged it then makes a beep and flashes some more information (but some of this is slightly off the screen).

copywrite 1996 - 2002 Intel Corporation
?4520. (series of numbers)
Something processor 2.4 GHz
Legacy enabled
Sony Disc something or other

??Board Error
Press F4 to resume

When the keyboard is inserted it just loops into restarting with no beep.


If I click F4 or F8 it does not boot into safemode. It just keeps restarting over and over counting up from 0.00 to 0.64 MB RAM, flash the Intel Logo Pentium 4 and monitor goes to sleep, computer restarts again.

If I tap all of the F keys in frustration it does enter BIOS SETUP UTILITY. It doesn't turn off or anything, just stays in BIOS.





So? Is She dead Doc? Any ideas ib what I should or could do? I was thinking of downloading an old XP boot disc and trying to set the BIOS to detect the CD drive first when trying to bootup. But, TTYTT I have no idea what I'm doing. I've looked around the BIO SETUP but there isn't much it seems in there that can help me

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Usually it's F2 to enter the BIOS during boot. Thats the first thing you should do considering older machines tend to lose their BIOS settings over time (usually due to the battery losing charge), you'll have to manually check the settings, make sure it can see the harddrive's or disc drives. Also be watchful of any "Palette snooping" being enabled or "Shadow memory", even "Memory holes" can undermine a legitimate bootup. (Incidentally Memory hole settings are what can cause a perfectly good system to not want to install *BSD)

If you have an installation of an OS and want to try and force safe mode, the obvious method is to hammer on the F8 key in the hope that you manage to cause it to enter into the safemode prompt. This can cause problems however, the alternative method to get to safe mode is to HOLD down the CTRL key during boot, apparently it doesn't cause a keyboard error and you don't miss the chance to get the prompt up.

If you get the prompt up, I'd suggest when you get the chance do a CHKDSK or equivalent, you see multiple failed bootups and crashes/shutdowns will likely cause errors to the drive structure which in turn will cause more instability issues. So try to repair the drive, once you've done that then obviously things like a defrag would be handy.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Thanks!

I'll give it a try tomorrow after work

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Hopefully I can get into safemode and run checkdisk

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Take the battery out put back in and reboot.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

How do you take the battery out? Do you have an imagine you could post of what it looks like.... OR are you making fun of me????

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

He's not making fun, in the older computers you should be able to find a battery similar to what you'd find in a watch (well larger than some watch batteries anyhow), in honesty though some system builds have a Jumper pin that you can change pins and boot to clear the CMOS.

I doubt disabling the battery will help or unplugging it just to refit it.

 

did i read you correctly? 0.64 MB RAM?
i am surprised windows ever came up in the first place.
my first guess was the power supply but you stated when you are in the BIOS setup utility the computer stayed on. there are really only 2 things you can check:
1. bad RAM. beg, borrow, or steal about 300 MB.
2. bad video card or corrupt video drivers.
be advised that windows after winme uses a different technology. the drivers for win 2000 and up is not backwards compatible.

 

Actually - one thing you guys have failed to do in this thread is narrow it down to either a software or hardware problem.



One simple way to do this is unplug the hard drive (as in disconnect the IDE cable that leads to the hard drive) and boot the computer. If a message pops up that says something in the way of "not being able to find bootable drive - press an fkey to continue" or "boot from another device", then that means nothing is wrong with the hardware.

If there is just a hosed windows installation on the hard drive that reboots after post, then all you have to do is reinstall windows. I see plenty of computers like this.

You can also get any old random live CD and see if it boots. if the live CD works, then there are no hardware problems.