New Installation help:

I have a computer that has a rather pecuiliar problem, for starters it is all new equipment, and in fine working condition...I can confirm that.. My problem is that when we turn the system on it will go as far as to let me in the bios then it will restart all by itself while i am navigating the bios menu. It will sometimes allow me to try and load into windows, however as we all know a lot of the new boards wont let us use a previously installed hard drive and os....drivers or soemthing.....anyway I get the good old blue screen with the generic error stating the volume is corrupt (shock there :) ) so instead i have it set to read from the cd-rom, and just redo the OS on the volume....it will sometimes load all the way in to letting me install the OS when it will automatically restart itself. Setup didnt need to have it restart or anything. Just all by itself.....The worst part is im just about stumped!

TheRouter

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for starters it is all new equipment, and in fine working condition...I can confirm that..

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Well if its randomly restarting ..in the BIOS...then there is something wrong with the hardware.

Remove all none essential hardware....all you need is harddrive, keyboard, mouse and video.

if it restarts with just those components..then swap memory, video...if it keeps rebooting...there is something wrong with the cpu or board....

Did you build this machine???

MLF

Yes I built it but, it was an upgrade for an old "Dell Demension 2400" I purchased a Abit SG-80dc and Pentium D 840 Dual Core 3.2ghz. Running 1024mb of 400mhz DDR. An old Radeon 8500 256mb GP, a maxtor 120gig ata IDE HD. 1 DvD/RW Drive combo, 1 56x CdRom. 250Watt PSU..

I've taken out all of the uneeded equipment and it still does the same thing... It will boot then as soon as i try and get into the bios or just minutes after it will reboot itself automatically. Im am completely stumped here...

TheRouter

Hmmm,

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250Watt PSU..

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Is that a typo?................I would say that a 250Watt PSU is your most likely problem. It is old, and probably doesn't deliver the performance it used too, and may not be compatible either.

I was using 400W PSUs 3 or 4 years ago. That 250W brick belongs in a miniATX box. :eek:

I am suggesting this as it is the most likely cause of the problem in my opinion. Brand name OEMs (apart from Alienware) tend to use cheap PSUs. My policy is that if I am going to do a major upgrade I automatically replace the CPU as a matter of course..........................it really isn't worth putting your new components at risk ;)

EDIT: This is from a review:

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Under full load, which was produced using CPU Stability Test 6.0, the high power consumption of the Intel systems compared to their AMD competition is clearly demonstrated. The most power-hungry system is the Pentium EE 840, which uses nearly 300W; even the entry-level Pentium D 820 consumes more power (245W) than AMD's
high-end Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (195W). The clear winner here is AMD's entry-level X2 3800+, which uses only 162W.

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Looking at a ZDNet review of a Pentium D (2.8) from April 2005, they were using a quality 550W PSU...................

Id go with nihil on this one, def sounds like a lack of power for those power hungry components.