Windows XP forum: My computer keeps restarting when I turn it on :( .

first with this kind of post you need to give details besides your system is old.
some of the problems could be...

bad memory chip
failing hardrive,power supply,processor, too much heat from failing processor fan. Could be a corrupted driver. Like a graphics driver. I assume your running XP? since your in the XP forum. Please give more technical details of your system and how old is it?

Lots of good advice already but one thing to try is quite simple! First if you have an old win 98 or ME start up disk pop it in the floppy and reset the bios to start with that. If the machine starts and an a> appears the power supply is working. Take the disk out and insert a Windows XP CD and reboot the machine tell the Bios to start from the CD and go through the disk until you come to the repair feature. Not the system repair which requires an admin password. just go through as if you were reinstalling it and a screen will appear and ask you if you want to repair the system that is there! Worth a try before you loose the lot!

I didn't download any questionable files recently, and my computer didn't get banged up or anything. The only thing I can think of is that it could be because I didn't clean my computer and some dust or something caused it.

My brother saw it and told me that it was the screen that quickly flashed looked like the "blue screen of death", which meant that my hard drive completely crashed and my computer was basically garbage now. Do you think that's true?

On the boot screen press F8 and the select disable automatic restart on sys failure or smthin like this
and then u will se the problem... if is C0002a Fatal System error .. that because an update ... search the forum ..

doesn't mean the computer is garbage. When I had a failed hard drive, I got an error message that said ''operating system cannot be found''. There was no blue screen of death and no rebooting. It was dead! If you do have a hard drive go bad, you can always install a new one, install the operating system, drivers and software and get it running again.

Your problem may be caused by something entirely different. Follow the advice and give more information about your computer so others can help.

What do you do to protect and scan for viruses and other malware?

..only opens up more boot options (Boot in debugger mode, etc). No matter which one I pick I get the same problem where it restarts.


I think it's possible it was the power supply box that went bad, but you didn't gave any advice for fixing it.....only that you had a warranty.

My old pc(very old) runs W98SE and has almost no memory(64Mb,you can see how old it is) and I bought this new one because it happened exactly the same as is happening to you.According to the technician:the power supply (its name is fountain?)and a chip of memory failing.The only cure was replacing the fountain and the memory.But I cant say this is whats happening to yours.I hope you find an answer.OX,
Caia