Win XP Pro

[josephz71]

My computer boots up, gets past POST... Just after it POST before it even hits the windows splash screen, the computer reboots. It's does this non stop. Is this a virus problem? BIOS recognizes that there is a harddrive. Thanks

Hi, please give us more information about your computer: your OS; make of computer; or if self-built the CPU, mainboard, memory; how old; etc.

Are you getting any error messages?
Is the computer 'beeping' differently?
Have you changed any hardware, software, or firmware?

[josephz71]

I built the pc. It's has a AMD 64 3000 cpu, motherboard is a ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe. I'm running two 6600 gt video cards.

It's not giving me any error messages. It gives the the normal 1 beep when I boot the pc. Just as it's about to finish post, it reboots itself. Over and over.

I've updated the BIOS, but I've run it for a whole week before this happened.

I unpluged the harddrive and after it post, it gave me the error message replace hardisk. Something is telling something is wrong with
the harddrive.

Hopefully this helps.

Thanks.

[sevenal]

I have read something about this before/
I think it's called LOOPING.
Might search with that phrase ?
sev

[josephz71]

thanks for the reply, I'll check it out.

[NoRefund]

Hello Jozeph,

sevenal might be right: http://www.tweakxp.com/article37161.aspx
I have a somewhat similar system running winxp 64bit, with 560W power supply (don't know how much of it is actually used, but my guess is you need over 400 to run SLI)

If that doesn't work go ahead and diagnoze whether the problem is HW related (MB / memory / HDD etc) or software (Windowz).
A normal ASUS A8N-SLI goes through the following boot steps:
1. SLI boot
2. IDE detection
3. RAID bios
4. Plug&Play detection
5. Device boot
From your description I assume all these steps are completed ok. To verify that, put a bootable CD in the driver and you should see "Hit any key to boot from CD..." if you don't see that message than something in your wiring is wrong.
In case it continues than there are some possible options:
A. Your HD boot sector is corrupt (this *can* be a virus, but can also be some bad HD)
B. Memory fault
C. Motherboard (or any card on the motherboard) shortcutting
To check this I recommend:
(1) Get a new HDD (can be an old small HDD you have lying around) install windows, see if the computer runs
(1.1) if it runs, I would try to low-level format the old HDD
(2) (option1 didn't work) Take out all extra MB cards (leave one 6600 on board) try to boot
(2.1) if it doesn't run you can try switching to the other 6600
(2.2) if it boots - put card one by one back in and try to boot (this will either find the culprit or point to a power supply overload)
(3) (option2 didn't work) you are in trouble at that point I would check the actual MB and memory, but it probably mean you need to reinstall your MB

-- Disclaimer -- This is a free advice and as such I do not guarantee it will solve your problem or even put you in a better position than you started at, anything you do to your machine is at your own risk. Best of luck,
NR.

[josephz71]

Thanks for the excellent reply. I figured out the MBR was corrupt. I tried to repair it but it wouldn't take. I figured it must of been a boot virus.

I ended up formating my HD and reinstalling the O.S.

Thanks again for the great reply!

[batmeat]

I'm sorry you reformatted your hard drive. It doesn't sound like a boot virus or a corrupt MBR to me. It sounds like a corrupt Boot.ini file. With XP and W2k you simply need to do a repair and it fixes the problem nearly 99% of the time. For future reference to do a repair, put in your OS cd. restart the computer so it boots to it. Press 'Enter' to install. Press 'F8' to accept the license agreement. Then it will search for previous versions of Windows. From here it will find the previous version and ask if you want to repair it.

[josephz71]

I've already tried to do a system repair and it wouldn't fix the corrupt files.

If I would of just formatted the hardrive from the begining I would of saved myslef a ton of time...and we all know time is money.

Thanks for the great post.