Sometimes hangs/reboots on startup.

[mechjames]

I'm trying to get my old system working that I was having trouble with about a year ago.

It will tend to freeze and reboot when booting a system. The times it will reboot is usually after the boot screen, but sometimes it will even log in.

It had started doing this last year after I installed a surround sound card, which I believe maxed out my 300w power supply.

I put a 500w power supply in, and I'm still having trouble booting up. It hangs on SPTD.sys if you try to boot into safe mode, but sometimes it will make it to the "loading your personal settings" screen, and freeze up there.

Just to check to make sure the HD wasn't failing, I swapped in a HD from a working system, and it hangs on AGP440.sys. On this system, I can't even get it to the login screen.

Is there possibly a circuit blown in my motherboard?

It is a dual boot system, and trying to load Fedora Linux will result in it freezing up and rebooting while it is initializing. So I believe it is hardware, not OS.

 

[mechjames]

Seems like I have a dead firewire card and a dead stick of RAM. It boots up now, but seems to randomly reboot still.

 

[mechjames]

Nope, it freezes while at the Desktop now. Just for kicks I tried booting into fedora:

CPU 0: Machine Check Exception: 0000000000000004
CPU 0: Bank 2: 7600000000020152 at 000000000072f042
Kernel Panic - not syncing: CPU context corrupt

 

[OVERKILL]

Have you tried Memtest86+?

 

[mechjames]

Yup, running it right now. First time passed 100%. Letting it run a few more times though.

 

[lairdwd]

take out any extra hardware devices and try to get a barebones system to boot up. Another thing you can try is boot into bios and reset settings to default.

Any chance you overclocked this system? If so, set back to defaults.

 

[ZZman]

Since you said t started when you installed the sound card have you pulled the card out and tried to boot it up?

 

[mechjames]

Memtest has passed 100% every time.

I have taken it down to a barebones system. Doesn't matter if it is barebones or a full system, its totally random if it finishes booting up, freezes, or hangs.

I'm possibly thinking CPU?

 

[mechjames]

Going to run SpinRite on level 5 to absolutely verify that my drive is ok. Then i'll see if there is any cpu's to swap in.

BTW This is an AMD Athlon XP 2500+.

 

[OVERKILL]

Got any bulging caps on the board?

What is the chipset on the board? VIA, SiS, ALI?

 

[mechjames]

No bulging caps that I can see, but i'll take a look.
MSI MS-7061 with a Via Km400

 

[PandaBear]

I saw this on my dad's PC a while back, tried everything and swap all the parts between 2 PCs, and turns out to be a power supply. Keep swapping parts between known working systems, I've seen these kind of problems on motherboards, RAMs, and power supplies.

Sometimes you have to wait till the temperature is high, leave it to burn in and check back every several hours.

 

[OVERKILL]

Definitely take a close look at those caps. I re-capped one of those boards about a month ago.

Oh, and I hate VIA, LOL!

 

[mechjames]

Weird thing about this, I've had spinrite run all night from a bootable CD, and it hasn't crashed or froze up. Should be done in an hour.

I already changed the power supply, mine was running at 11 volts.

 

[greenaccord02]

I'm thinking bad CPU. It's rare, but this seems consistent with a bad chip. Your memory is good and your board seems OK. It may be that windows issues an instruction that causes a fault in the CPU. Spinrite memtest might be written or compiled in such a way that they don't use the instruction that triggers it.

 

[OVERKILL]

The Ultimate BootCD has a CPU test on it. Easy way to check!

 

[mechjames]

Well, I found a few bulging capacitors. Looks like my issue right there.

Spinrite completed 100%. Hard drive is A'OK.

Found a new Asus motherboard with CPU and 1GB Ram included for $50 on craigslist. I'm going to try that.

greenaccord02:

Yes it could be windows, but this is a dual boot system, and Fedora won't fully boot either.

 

[mechjames]

Yup, tried Ultimate Boot Disc

Can`t get any of the CPU tests to load. My machine just clicks and then hangs or reboots.

Can`t wait for the guy on craigslist to call back. The motherboard is an upgrade, more PCI slots, and 1GB ram, in addition to my 256 and 512 sticks.

 

[OVERKILL]

And no bulging caps

I've had to re-cap a LOT of MSI boards. I hate them.

 

[mechjames]

Picked up my mobo tonight, forgot to get the standoffs and the plate on the back of the case *smack*