The comp I built for my folks is having issues, again. As near as I can tell, it was fine until last week. It started not shutting off properly, it would get stuck then dad would just kill the power strip it was plugged into.

The details:
win xp pro, sp3
PC Chips M825G mobo
athlon xp 2100 chip
half gig of ram
I think it had a samsung 80g hdd, installed last spring
zone alarm pro & avg

When I tried it Sunday, it would boot up through to the XP splash loading screen then beep once and reboot. Sometimes a warning screen would open, asking if I'd want to use safe mode or the last normal configuration. I tried all of the options, it never went into safe mode or any of the other choices.

I tried changing the boot sequence to the cd drive 1st, then boot with the xp cd. Nothing changed, same endless loop of booting to the xp splash then beep and restart.

Is it the hdd gone bad? The boot up loads too fast for me to see the full check, but the ram checks fine. This is the 2nd hdd, the first one went bad about 6 months ago.

Is it the board?

I'm rusty at fixing hardware problems, all of the other comps I've built for myself and family are running fine <knock on wood>.



Any insight would be appreciated. TIA

I'd start off by checking the hard drive using Samsung's diagnostic software downloadable here as a bootable floppy or CD image. Be careful with it, though, as you can erase the hard drive if you pick the wrong option.

The best thing to do would be to pull the hard drive and install it on a good system for testing (to eliminate motherboard failure from the equation-- just don't allow it to boot into Windows to avoid messing anything up). If it test doesn't show anything wrong with the hard drive, I'd check the the power supply first (as it is the easiest thing to swap) then the motherboard last.

As a general rule, I avoid PC Chips motherboards. The money you save up front in relative cheapness never makes up for the misery that the board will eventually put you through on the back end.

It may just be coincidental but I have had three computers come in recently with similar symptoms. All had AMD processors and were running AVG free. One was running Vista and the others XP. They were all infected with the trojan.Zlob and Rootkit.TDSS that were associated with the Rogue.WinAntiVirus (or one of it's other incarnations). They all operated OK even after being infected until AVG downloaded and installed 2 updates dated 10/9/09 then they started to shut down and start up more and more slowly until they eventually wouldn't boot anymore and just did the loop like yours.

The Vista machine I was able to get to start in safe mode manually and select "last known good" to boot to windows and run MalWareBytes. One XP would boot to safe mode using the f8 (or f2 or ESC, whatever yours uses) and then I could run MalWareBytes, the other I had to boot to the WinCD and run the repair option only after choosing to install and waiting for the installer to recognize the earlier install of XP.

It sounds like your folks machine didn't save the BIOS boot sequence change correctly as when you tried to boot to the CD it still attempted to boot from the HD. I would try entering BIOS setup again and make sure the boot sequence still shows to use the CDRom first, if not change it again and be sure to "Exit and Save" so the changes take effect. I assume that there is only one CDRom drive in the computer, if not be sure to try to boot the WinCD from both CD drives.

In all cases MalWareBytes was able to quarantine and delete the problems and afterwards the machines all worked fine. (Be sure to turn off System Restore before running the MalWareBytes scan so it can disinfect any files stored in previous restore points)

Running system file checker wouldn't hurt either (sfc /scannow) from the command prompt or you can run it during the boot sequence if you can get the computer to recognize the WinCD in the CDRom drive using sfc /scanboot

For XP

Have you tried booting to safe mode?
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm

Thank you all for the help



I ended up reformatting the disk and reloading everything

Now that you have a clean install with all the security patches installed, now might be a good time to back that sucker up for the next time this happens!

That is very high on my list


Besides reinstalling software, I have to reset all of the bookmarks, too. Even though my dad had been working with computers since the mid 1960s...the geezer geek stumbles around when surfing the net.