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December 25th, 2002, 10:00 AM
#1
Senior Member
Computer Restarts
Alright, this is one cool problem, alteast you'll enjoy reading it.
My friend's dad is very strict on him because his computer encroaches upon study time which he doesnt appreciate at all. So, he's done some strange thing, and apparently it's software based, because his dad doesnt seem to know much about hardware.
What happens is, when he loads with Windows 98 and works normally, everything goes fine till he's working with basic windows applications like MS-Word etc. As soon as he opens an external application like Winamp or anything at all, the computer restarts. The poor guy has tried everything and hasnt been able to find any other software on the computer.
However, he's just trying to manage to put a new external hard disk everytime he has to work and change its boot settings and boot it somehow, work and then change everything again, that, when his dad isnt home, which even wastes more time than would otherwise.
So, i thought i'd help him, i went over but didnt find anything strange.
Anybody any ideas ?
\"I have a 386 Pentium.\"
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December 25th, 2002, 10:58 AM
#2
Member
There are two posibilities that I can think of,
One, there is some kind of monitoring program that is running in the back ground and detects what processes are started. Such as program would have to be started automatically, so check the Run, RunOnce sections of the registry as well as the obvious start locations such as the startup folder, also it may be worth checking the win.ini file I kid you not.
Two, all of the sortcuts have been modified to restart the PC (shrugs), check where your friend is launching the aplications from and then try launching the valid aplications from different locations.
WaveRebel
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December 25th, 2002, 11:05 AM
#3
Senior Member
emm..wave, that run, runonce ideas are nice, that didnt come to my mind.
First thing ill do now !
Oh, and the second possibility you mentioned, we already checked that out .
\"I have a 386 Pentium.\"
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December 25th, 2002, 01:18 PM
#4
If none of the above good ideas work then he can always do a system restore to a day when all was OK. I don't remember exactly how many "restore points" you have to go back in Windows 98 but hope this can help.
Good luck!!!
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December 25th, 2002, 03:19 PM
#5
Also, try booting into dos and doing a dir /a/s/p to see if there's any software installed that isn't supposed to be there. And Dark-Raider, there's no System Restore in Win98.
Cheers,
cgkanchi
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December 25th, 2002, 03:35 PM
#6
cgkanchi,
Are you sure? Reboot your Windows 98, go to DOS mode and type SCANREG /RESTORE
Bye.
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December 25th, 2002, 06:19 PM
#7
Are you sure? Reboot your Windows 98, go to DOS mode and type SCANREG /RESTORE
That just restores to a different registry. Generally, you get about 3-5 of these. They are created at every boot. From the sounds of it... if it reboots several times a day... he's not going to want to do that. It won't matter.
Do a ctrl-alt-del and show us what processes are running. maybe we can figure it out from that. Do it right after all processes are loaded. do a print screen, paste it to a doc and attach for us.
the msconfig utility will show you what is starting up. use this commnand from start- run.
If you do the msconfig, you can uncheck the services that are causing the "problem" and then check it back off after he is done his "school work".
Otherwise... if you use the registry to delete the keys, you will have to manually add them or export/import them which can be a real pain in the arse.
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December 25th, 2002, 06:25 PM
#8
phishphreek80,
Is the way Windows 98 (for example) has to restore some changes done in Windows erasing some entries in the registry to a previos date. This process has "saved" me many times with small problems.
Thank for your add, bye.
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December 27th, 2002, 02:40 PM
#9
Junior Member
This is a long shot ... but I thought I'd post it anyway ...
Is it possible, that the reasons for the restarts are not solely software-related, but could possible also be due to a hardware problem ... for example, CPU overheating? I've noticed that at times when my CPU starts to heat up, it does a restart all by itself.
Anyway, just offering a suggestion.
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December 27th, 2002, 03:00 PM
#10
Yeah, need to show us what processes are running to figure out what is restarting the comp all the time. . .side note: I used 98se for a while and I never new it had a system restore option, I wouldn't have bought GoBack if I knew it did.
Every now and then, one of you won't annoy me.
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