Endless reboot.. gah help

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bboynitrous

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 29, 2004
Messages
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Hey guys what's up. I have a problem with a friend of mines computer. I have tried just about everything to get it to work. I have come to the conclusion that it may in fact, be the motherboard. But i'm not certain.

When I boot up the computer, (it's an IBM 1GHz P3, Unknown board and chipset, 512mb micron ram, 40GB Western Digital HDD, onboard lan) it seems to start up normal until it tries to load windows. I can hear it access the drive being accessed and the loading bar on the bottom of windows (like the one on 2k) starts and then bam, it reboots. It will keep doing this forever. I can't get into safe mode and i've quick formatted 3 times and full formatted twice. I've switched out the ram, it's fine. The hard drive boots up in my computer and I even installed windows on it without a hitch. I took out all expansion cards (eg 56k modem and PCI Radeon VE 64MB). It has onboard sound which I disabled along with about half the other devices onboard. Seems to have happened out of no where.. Could it just be the motherboard went bad? Anyway let me know what you guys thing.

Nit
 
can you boot from CD? I'd try running:
chkdsk /r
and seeing what happens. Chkdsk has saved my skin numerous times.
when you try booting from safe mode, is there a certain driver/something that it hangs at every time?

Can you even get to the boot menu (by pressing f8 on boot up)?
 
Is it stable in the bios.
Are you stable running Memtest86.

Luck........... :D
u=Tigerbiten.gif
 
yeah I can boot from the cd's just fine.. I can install windows fine too. It just doesn't load it. Then once it reboots for (normal reboot it needs with 15 second wait) it starts the endless ones. I have the harddrive as secondary startup method so it doesn't keep going through the cd's obviously :). I've never seen this before.. It's so weird. One of few problems I haven't been able to fix :confused:
 
yeah it's stable in the bios, I haven't run memtest though. The computer has been fine for the last year and a half... would the memory just generate errors though? I can get to the safemode option and start up and then I see the mup.sys as the last file. Then it just reboots.
 
was it a chkdsk with the /r switch? if you run it switchless it hardly ever finds any errors.
Another thing to think about is if the monitor can handle the resolution. Although i'm 99% sure that is not your problem.

Mup.sys is probably not actually what's killing the install, it's probably a device driver or other system file that comes right after the Mup.sys. I was having this problem as well trying to get a computer running. I'd try another hard drive just to be certain. I'm sure you can gut an old one out of a computer just to check...
 
I haven't run memtest86 yet.. I don't have any floppies right now. I have some old crucial memory that I know is good. I'll try it later. No, I haven't run the /r on the chkdsk yet. I did the /f option. Doing /r right now. So far it seems okay. I'll let you know. I also tried my hard drive in there to boot in safe mode.. does the same thing. I was hoping for a blue screen or a run in safe mode.. did not get either. Just restarts.
 
is that harddrive a Caviar?... if so, take out the jumpers for it... you cannot use any jumpers for WD caviars if its used as single drive

try that and report back
 
Definately run memtest. If you don't have a floppy with it, but have some blank cd's..go here

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It has all the HDD diags and memtest as well.

Anyway, other than that, make sure the board doesn't have any blown capacitors. I've seen quite a few IBM boards with blown caps....that's all i got for ya.
 
wayne said:
is that harddrive a Caviar?... if so, take out the jumpers for it... you cannot use any jumpers for WD caviars if its used as single drive

try that and report back
Click to expand...

I think it is, I took out the jumpers already. It's fine. I'll run memtest on it when I get back from class. Thanks for the linkage havenoclu. I will get on that asap and report back tonight, btw, how long should memtest run for? I've never ran it :(. like 4-6 hours? Would that be sufficient?
 
It runs a standard loop of 7 test.
Dependent on your memory speed then 1 Gig takes around an hour or three.
Just let it loop around 3 times to be sure.
The only good answer is no errors.

Luck......... :D
u=Tigerbiten.gif
 
Also: Longshot, but did you format the drive/install windows in another computer? I've had this problem when i started a Windows XP imaging project at work. Just curious
 
I have checked the capacitors, there is a one that looks a bit different. I wish I had a camera, but I don't. The capacitor has a rustk(looks like rust, brownish/reddish) spot on it in the center. It's not huge, but the others do not have it, they are shiny, could this be blown?

rofl, nm it wasn't anything. It was just dirt. I scraped it off.
 
Sounds like a blown cap to me. Are any others swollen? (Bulging at the top) If so, that is most likely your problem.

edit: just read the bottom of your post...ok..so no blown caps.. good.
 
I had this same problem when I installed Service Pack 2, it didn't like my wireless card, maybe Windows is just reading some hardware wrong?
 
Most likely not crion. I doubt he has an xp install disc w/ SP2 slipstreamed into it. I have however seen that issue as well.
 
Damn man, this is upsetting. I hate when I can't figure something liek this out.. Computer is really pissing me off :mad: . I've tried everythign I know. Just doesn't boot. I threw my old crucial ram in the system. It was in my sisters computer which runs 24/7 because they are too lazy to turn it off, and it NEVER crashes. I used that ram instead of running memtest. System is still fooked.. :( Any more suggestions? I'm stumped. I should just fire it out the window.
 
Might be a bad board or CPU (Hard to test). Have you taken all the pci cards out and just left the bare minimum in system to see if your OS will boot? How about safe mode? I know someone mentioned safe mode, but I don't recall you saying if it would go or not.

Also, the memory probably isn't the prob since you put known good memory in it (did you try different dimm slots w/ the good memory?) Have you run the Western Digital diagnostic on your hard drive?

If you have done all of this, I'd be betting on a bad board unfortunately.
 
havenoclu said:
Might be a bad board or CPU (Hard to test). Have you taken all the pci cards out and just left the bare minimum in system to see if your OS will boot? How about safe mode? I know someone mentioned safe mode, but I don't recall you saying if it would go or not.

Also, the memory probably isn't the prob since you put known good memory in it (did you try different dimm slots w/ the good memory?) Have you run the Western Digital diagnostic on your hard drive?

If you have done all of this, I'd be betting on a bad board unfortunately.
Click to expand...

Yep, took out all the PCI cards, switched up IRQs in the bios as well. I heard though today that they were in the middle of using the computer and it just rebooted by itself and it just kept looping. Safe mode doesn't work. Cuts out at the mup.sys thing and just keeps going (restarting). I haven't switched the good ram into the other slot yet. Don't know if that would really affect since I kept switch the other ram back and forth and that ram was probably good. It only has two slots heh. Like i've said before, the HD boots in my computer just fine. When I stick it back where it belongs, it goes nuts. I guess it's just a bad board. I don't know wtf could have happened to it though. I've never seen a board just crap out like this. I have taken out EVERYTHING before started with just video, 1 stick of ram, and mobo to see and it still does it. Thanks for the posting guys. I'll just go with teh board is fucked. haha, I don't exactly know how to tell her though. Oh well.
 
Yeh..that sucks. I see boards go bad, but show no physical signs often in my line of work. It's kinda like you just have to come to that conclusion after you've tested every other part in the machine.
 
bboynitrous said:
Yep, took out all the PCI cards, switched up IRQs in the bios as well. I heard though today that they were in the middle of using the computer and it just rebooted by itself and it just kept looping. Safe mode doesn't work. Cuts out at the mup.sys thing and just keeps going (restarting). I haven't switched the good ram into the other slot yet. Don't know if that would really affect since I kept switch the other ram back and forth and that ram was probably good. It only has two slots heh. Like i've said before, the HD boots in my computer just fine. When I stick it back where it belongs, it goes nuts. I guess it's just a bad board. I don't know wtf could have happened to it though. I've never seen a board just crap out like this. I have taken out EVERYTHING before started with just video, 1 stick of ram, and mobo to see and it still does it. Thanks for the posting guys. I'll just go with teh board is fucked. haha, I don't exactly know how to tell her though. Oh well.
Click to expand...
You say it boots fine in your machine. Does it boot all the way to windows fine? If so, it's probably complaining because you have different chipsets (i would imagine this is the case).
If so: please refer to this link:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=77909774&m=1400925745

Good luck, and i think that might do the trick for you
 
diredesire said:
You say it boots fine in your machine. Does it boot all the way to windows fine? If so, it's probably complaining because you have different chipsets (i would imagine this is the case).
If so: please refer to this link:
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=77909774&m=1400925745

Good luck, and i think that might do the trick for you
Click to expand...

I was talking about my hard drive booting fine in mine, and not in theirs. I formatted everytime I switched computers for their hard drive and it worked fine in mine, but in their system with their hard drive, it was still rebooting by itself.
 
bboynitrous said:
I was talking about my hard drive booting fine in mine, and not in theirs. I formatted everytime I switched computers for their hard drive and it worked fine in mine, but in their system with their hard drive, it was still rebooting by itself.
Click to expand...
damn. :D
tried a PCI IDE controller card yet?
 
I am getting the same issue that you are. It gets on some BS loop and it is annoying the hell out of me. It is also someone else's rig which sucks because I am not too sure what he did to it to cause to act like this.

I'll post back if I encounter something.
 
Same issue here. Windows XP keeps rebooting and never gets to windows.

Help??!! :confused:

Just a note that the machine worked perfectly before.
 
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