XP Pro Reboots During Start Up

[Canopus]

How do I diagnose what's failing? I boot up from cold, XP gets so far
then the screen goes blank and rather than the Welcome screen coming up
it re-boots to the screen telling me that Windows failed to start and
giving me the options to continue, go into Safe Mode etc. I select
Continue and Windows boots up and everything is apparently fine. With
W98se I could step through the Boot until I found out what was failing
to load, but, I cannot seem to do it with XP.

Rob

[Rich Barry]

Usually that's symptomatic of a Power Supply traveling South. You
could try Motherboard Monitor which will give
you a readout of your 3.3v, 5v and 12v lines. They should not dip
below 5%
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7309,RSS,RSS,00.asp

"Canopus" > wrote in message
...
> How do I diagnose what's failing? I boot up from cold, XP gets so far
> then the screen goes blank and rather than the Welcome screen coming up
> it re-boots to the screen telling me that Windows failed to start and
> giving me the options to continue, go into Safe Mode etc. I select
> Continue and Windows boots up and everything is apparently fine. With
> W98se I could step through the Boot until I found out what was failing
> to load, but, I cannot seem to do it with XP.
>
> Rob

[da_test]

On Sat, 07 May 2005 01:29:01 GMT, "Rich Barry"
> wrote:

> Usually that's symptomatic of a Power Supply traveling South. You
>could try Motherboard Monitor which will give
> you a readout of your 3.3v, 5v and 12v lines. They should not dip
>below 5%
>http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7309,RSS,RSS,00.asp
>
>"Canopus" > wrote in message
...
>> How do I diagnose what's failing? I boot up from cold, XP gets so far
>> then the screen goes blank and rather than the Welcome screen coming up
>> it re-boots to the screen telling me that Windows failed to start and
>> giving me the options to continue, go into Safe Mode etc. I select
>> Continue and Windows boots up and everything is apparently fine. With
>> W98se I could step through the Boot until I found out what was failing
>> to load, but, I cannot seem to do it with XP.
>>
>> Rob
>
Take a look in the event viewer for any related messages that may
have been logged.
Dave

[Ron Martell]

"Canopus" > wrote:

>How do I diagnose what's failing? I boot up from cold, XP gets so far
>then the screen goes blank and rather than the Welcome screen coming up
>it re-boots to the screen telling me that Windows failed to start and
>giving me the options to continue, go into Safe Mode etc. I select
>Continue and Windows boots up and everything is apparently fine. With
>W98se I could step through the Boot until I found out what was failing
>to load, but, I cannot seem to do it with XP.
>
>Rob

Right-click on My Computer and select Manage.
Expand the Event Viewer category and browse through each of the 3
subcategories looking for red-flagged error records whose date and
time stamps correspond to your startup/reboot incidents.

Double click on an error record to see the details of that error.
Post the error record details back here if you need further assistance
with this.

Another option would be to use Control Panel - System - Advanced and
click on the Settings button in the Startup and Recovery (bottom)
section. In the Startup and Recovery window click on the checkbox for
"automatically restart" to clear it then click on Apply and OK as
needed to exit.

That should result in a "Blue Screen Of Death" STOP error message
instead of a reboot and your computer may then lock up, requiring a
manual power off and restart. However the contents of the STOP error
message including the STOP code, all 4 parameters, and any file or
device names mentioned will be a direct clue as to the underlying
cause of your problems. Post that information back here for further
assistance if needed.

I suspect that this problem may be related to a hardware component
that is not functioning properly when cold but which warms up and
starts to operate normally after the power has been on for a minute or
two. These can be very difficult to identify, at least until the
problem gets worse.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

[Canopus]

Ron Martell on 07/05/2005 wrote:

> "Canopus" > wrote:
>
> > How do I diagnose what's failing? I boot up from cold, XP gets so
> > far then the screen goes blank and rather than the Welcome screen
> > coming up it re-boots to the screen telling me that Windows failed
> > to start and giving me the options to continue, go into Safe Mode
> > etc. I select Continue and Windows boots up and everything is
> > apparently fine. With W98se I could step through the Boot until I
> > found out what was failing to load, but, I cannot seem to do it
> > with XP.
> >
> > Rob
>
> Right-click on My Computer and select Manage.
> Expand the Event Viewer category and browse through each of the 3
> subcategories looking for red-flagged error records whose date and
> time stamps correspond to your startup/reboot incidents.

Well, once again it did it when booting up from cold today. Strangely
there are no error messages in Event Viewer in any of the three
categories corresponding with the time of boot up. Would this indicate
that my PC didn't even load system files to instigate the event logs?

Once again everything seems to work fine after the system rebooted.

Rob