computer rebooting automatically on startup

Romantic Undead

Hey guys.

got home today to turn on the old 'puter and was dismayed to find that it keeps rebooting during the "loading Windows XP" screen.

After rebooting, I get the error message saying startup wasn't completed.
Safe mode works, thankfully, and I am currently defragging to see if that helps, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that won't solve anything.

What else can cause this problem? Power Supply? Faulty HD? Any advice would be appreciated.

devoir

If safe mode works, generally it's going to be something that starts during the normal boot sequence. Try using safe mode to run antivirus, antispyware, clear out your start up list in msconfig.

stigweard

If you can get into safe moce, you can disable rebooting on blue screen. Goto the system proerties in the advanced tab and hit the startup and recovery buton. In there, the last checkbox should be automatically restart. Uncheck it and reboot. Write down the blue screen error and post it here.

I wouldn't defrag either. If you have a dying drive that is causing random corruption, you could be exasperating the problem by moving all the data over potentially bad sectors.
.

Romantic Undead

Sorry Stig, got your advice too late and the defrag is already done.
As I thought, didn't change a damn thing.

I disabled any non-critical things on startup in MSconfig as well, to no avail. I'll take your advice and see about posting that error report for you guys when I get home tonight.

thanks!

Romantic Undead

update: after following stig's advice, here's what I got:

error:

problem with the file ativaxx.dll

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
*** STOP: 0x00000050 (0xE33DF08D, 0x00000000, 0xBFD78086, 0x00000001)
*** ativaxx.dll - Address BFD78086 base at BFD0E000, Datestamp 4563bf20

So it looks like it might be a problem with my video card and/or its driver. Strange, since I haven't updated its driver in a while and (to my knowledge) it doesn't have an automatic update installed, unless it's doing so in the background without letting me know.

My video card is the Radeon X1300 512MB DDR2 PCI-E DVI if that helps.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. I'd rather not deal with MDG if I don't have to. Even though my computer is still under warranty, they'll never admit to any wrongdoing. Only keep my computer for 2 days, fix whatever's wrong with it, then give it back claiming there was nothing wrong with it at all and that I'm crazy.

Fuckers.

Scosglen

Try uninstalling your Radeon drivers and see if you can boot up normally without a bluescreen.

Romantic Undead

Scosglen wrote: »

Try uninstalling your Radeon drivers and see if you can boot up normally without a bluescreen.

Will I still get a display without video drivers? (sorry if that's a noob question)

stigweard

There are a couple of things you can do from here. Firstly, boot into safe mode with networking support and download the latest ati drivers. Before you reboot, go into the device manager and uninstall the card under display adapter. Reboot. When windows tries to automatically re-install the driver, cancel and then install the new drivers. Reboot, and see if it blue screens. You will also need .net installed if you aren't currently using a driver that needs CCC. The Catalyst control center needs to have .net installed. You should be able to install that from safe mode, or before you install the new drivers once you get back into regular mode.

I've also seen those type of stop errors when there is hdd corruption and the drive is failing. You can check the drive using the utilities that come from the manufacturer. Re-installing the drivers might bypass any bad sectors, should there be any, but you might find other strange behavior later on, and this is a good place to start.

Romantic Undead

That did it, thanks guys.

I'm a little perturbed by the dying HD notion though, this is a brand new computer bought from MDG in February. Isn't it a little early to be throwing away my HD? Or did I get ripped off?

stigweard

Pretty much any computer hardware with moving parts has a failure rate that matches the bathtub curve. Hardware is much more likely to fail when new or at the end of life than it is to die in between. Give it a scan anyway if you are nervous, but it could have been any number of things (like an automatic windows update) that gave you the problem.

Romantic Undead

Well, I suppose that would be a matter for another thread.

Thanks again guys!

another CASE SOLVED by the friendly folks at H/A.