Help me before i kill this computer.

Hey all,
I have a problem with a computer I am working on. It is a Pentium III 900 with 30 gig hard drive running Win 2K pro. Recently it wouldnt turn on. but now it turns on and I cant get it to boot up Windows. It gets the the first boot screen and the scroll bar get almost to the end then the computer restarts. I also tried selecting safe mode but that didn't work. Now I am trying a reinstall cause I am at a total loss of what to try. I have tried disabling hardware in the bios but it still is not working.

Any help would be greatly apreaciated. Thanks

Welcome to Windows! :) lol.. I've had this problem before.. It can be caused by and affected boot up when yo first loaded the box with the OS. Try re-installing it again and then if it doesn't work, try system restore at startup. Again, Im not much into Windows problems but I can try to help. If you still have problems, PM me.

It might have hardware or driver it does not like. It happened to me when installing WinXP Pro, and found out it was a master/slave setting. Just double check everything no matter how trivial. Also try another OS and see what hapenens to rule out master/slave stuff...

Hope this helps

And reinstalling didn't help either? Have you tried booting from a disk? How about trying to install another OS, just to see if that works? Just too find out it's a software or a hardware problem.

Are all the fans running? Have you tested the RAM lately? Whenever I run into problems like this that do not seem to obey any kind of pattern, I generally suspect hardware first. I'm wary of 4 things: CPU, RAM, Power Supply, and Cooling Systems (Heatsinks, fans, etc).

Heh, shoulda thought of that albn! Good job man! You know more than I do.. lol :)

Quote:

---

Heh, shoulda thought of that albn! Good job man! You know more than I do.. lol

---

I doubt there is much truth to that statement. It just happned to be a problem I ran into a while back, and if it helps Casper any, then I deserve praises and thanks, otherwise, it's just an idea....

i havent reinstalled yet. I also tried booting using the last known good config, that didnt work. I have taken out every card in the computer. i am reinstalling now.

BTW does any one know how to get the address book out of outlook express when I have the drive but cant open the program?\

Ram works. All fans are running. Hard drive is set on single.

There are database files for outlook express,and is found here:

X:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book

Hope this helps.

This may be off the subject, but I had a cooling problem where I would get a system up, and it would run for a couple seconds and either freeze or reboot. Unless I left it down for a couple minutes, every time I would reboot it would self reset. Is this similiar to your problem?

i found all of the others but cant find the address book.( we have the whole hard drive copied to another hard drive so we can play with the files.)
I found them in C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{310811FF-5D3C-47E8-963C-5A4F116067D0}\Microsoft\Outlook Express
On my server it has contacts on a data base but not on the win2k pro box there isnt one.
Thanks for all your help alittlebitnumb and everybody else.
Please keep the help coming.

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by X=-FakeBoy-=X
This may be off the subject, but I had a cooling problem where I would get a system up, and it would run for a couple seconds and either freeze or reboot. Unless I left it down for a couple minutes, every time I would reboot it would self reset. Is this similiar to your problem?

---

kinda but it is only doing this to me on booting the OS. I am reinstalling now and it has been up and hasent restarted or froze yet.
My thought that it might be hardware detection and something during that faze kills it.

hey all. I got it to work now it seems like it was only the OS decided to blow up. Thanks for everyones help.

My suggestion would be to check the RAM. I've had almost the exact same error on my overclocked T-Bird when I cranked the FSB up too high for the RAM. If Windows gets a memory error like that during boot-up, it will spontaneously reboot. Linux, however, was perfectly stable except for the odd gcc segfault when compiling...... go figure.

Yeah, I'll stick with problemchild's post and say to check the RAM. I too had a cooling problem but it was fixed and was sort of similiar to this problem.

Now that I am working in Win2k now (I like the OS :) ), the address book is here:

X:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book

Quote:

---

I found them in C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{310811FF-5D3C-47E8-963C-5A4F116067D0}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

---

That path seems strange. Is that a server value? Just a inquiry.

casper what haas changed with the system? If nothing has changed, how old is the hard drive? I could be memory as everyone is stating but in the last 8 years I have only seen one bad memory module. And once ram was working it seem to just work. It may slao be a bad sector onthe hard drive which is causing a boot failure. If there is a critical file localed in that sector it could just go south. Reloading the OS will/should correct issues with booting. Are you able to boot the system for a boot disk or with a bootable cd-rom. if you are that would lead me to believe it is not a memory issue. since you are starting the boot process again it is something that is loading (or not loading, bad sector) that is causing it to stop