Help! My PC starts and then restarts

[Lucky_Luke17]

Hi Everyone

First off, I'm sorry about if this is on the wrong forum category.

Secondly, I need some urgent help with my PC. Yesterday, I was inserting a hard drive and ramm into my PC from my mom's older one to boost speed and to retrieve info. After also doing a cleanup on the PC, I restarted it to find a "boots up and then immediately restarts" problem. After finding something that I forgot to plug back in, it now restarted and after about 10 seconds it restarts. Now if you're wondering why I didn't go to a forum with this problem already, it's because the odd thing in my PC, and what makes it unique, is that the system fan at the back of my case turns off about 2 or 3 seconds later while all others (CPU heat sink and front case fans) stay on for the 10 second duration.

 

[Hexicon]

Ok... I feel like we are not getting the full story. Did you have this problem before adding the parts to the computer ? Did you mess with any other parts ? Is it running both existing ram and the ram you just added ? Is the "new" hard drive added with SATA "slim data cable" or PATA (thin but wide)?

techulator.com/attachments/Resources/3045-3643-SATA_vs_PATA.png

 

[secolliyn]

the Fans are what concers me most although we do not have enough info
first thing i would try is to remove any and all new parts that were put in the computer and see if it will boot into windows
after that add one part at a time meaning 1 stick of ram booting and then another stick of ram if the first one works ect ect
have you tried Safe mode?
what is the end game here ie to save things off the computer and to reinstall windows or just clean it up adding the ram makes it faster so everything would be fine after that?

 

[Lucky_Luke17]

Ok... I feel like we are not getting the full story. Did you have this problem before adding the parts to the computer ? Did you mess with any other parts ? Is it running both existing ram and the ram you just added ? Is the "new" hard drive added with SATA "slim data cable" or PATA (thin but wide)?

techulator.com/attachments/Resources/3045-3643-SATA_vs_PATA.png

Accidentally messed up the reply thing twice *facepalm*. So here is the reply finally:

I'm sorry you don't think I'm telling the full story but I oath it is true. To give you a proper background to the reason, and explain myself - I was asked by mom whose computer recently broke to retrieve the info off her hard drive before we got rid of it. So I decided to clean the PC at the same time since I was opening it. To confirm: I did not have any problems before opening it up. So in order to clean the graphics card, yes, I did mess with it and some cables on the motherboard. To the best of my knowledge (elementary my dear Watson) I side place them all properly back.

I tested it and it didn't work - the whole "starts and immediately restarts" story. After looking in forums I decided to remove the ramm both new and old. This meant that the PC would keep running if it was a ramm issue - unfortunately not the case. I also removed the connections from my mom's hard drive so it was no longer part of the system. This also didn't seem to fix the problem. Also the hard drive is connected with a SATA. Would you like me to post my specs?

 

[Hexicon]

Try this out, in order

1) Bring your computer back to the original hardware configuration
2) go into the bios and set it to load default settings
3) your computer should be ok now
4) shutdown and plug back in the spare hard drive
5) If it is recoverable, data should turn up now

My best inference is, the two different rams have speeds/ timings(capabilities) that are far apart. When ram is not configured or auto configured correctly it will definitely cause that issue due to instability. How I came up with this ?

1)your pc was ok
2) you added parts and it reboots within seconds a lot
3) A hard drive wouldn't produce such symptoms, especially if its an alternate
4) That added ram really feels like the red herring. Ive messed with ram plenty enough to have the same things occur.

Removing all the ram wouldn't help in this case.