PC randomly restarts during Windows XP Setup

[raven07]

Hi everyone I'm trying to do a clean reinstall of Windows XP after the PC kept restarting itself over and over. At first I thought it was a heat problem, so I cleaned the entire case out of dust. Still kept restarting despite temps never going greater than 60. So I checked the event logs, and it kept showing an ATI driver error. Tried to install fresh drivers, but PC keeps restarting itself during the installation. So I said screw it, let's do a clean install of XP and start from there. Now XP won't get past the file copying segment of the installation from TXT mode. I've done full reformats, not the quick ones, after I delete every partition off the main hard drive, multiple times, and still it restarts itself. Next, I tried reseating everything and reconnecting everything to see if that made a difference. Still restarts itself. After reading around online, I saw it might be due to crapped out RAM, so I ran memtest. It restarted itself before it could finish up a full run. Got two new sticks of RAM. Put them in. Still restarts during installation

SO...does anyone have a clue as to what's wrong? I don't have the funds to spend on a completely new system yet, so any suggestions would be highly welcome. Thank you all for your time!

 

[onichikun]

Honestly, it sounds like your PSU may have had its day. Do you have a spare ATX PSU you could try?

For future note, a RAM problem will not cause memtest to restart your PC; rather, memtest will report the error. A restart like that is only going to be caused by a serious fault, or power issue...

 

[prit87]

see if the restarts happens with a single ram stick..

 

[raven07]

onichikun: I don't have a spare power supply but I'm gonna borrow one from a friend and see if it solves the problem.

prit87: I've tried the setup with every possible configuration for the RAM. It's not just one failing or a hiccup between the two sticks causing the restarts.

 

[raven07]

Alright I tried a Seasonic X850 psu. It's still restarting itself. Any other ideas?