WindowsXP restarts at startup or 3 seconds after start up

[taimur]

The Hardware:
Athlon 64 3000+ 939pin
MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum (NForce4 Ultra)
1GB DDR400 Princeton Value RAM
80GB SATA Seagate Baracuda 7200
80GB Parallel Seagate Baracuda 7200
Inno 3d GForce 6600GT 128MB
iiYama 21" CRT
Siemens Santis 128k ISDN Modem Hub USB(possible troublemaker)
SONY DVDRW
AOPEN CDRW
AOPEN 450watt PSU

OS & Primary Software:
Windows XP Professional
XP Service Pack 2
Norton Internet Security & Norton Antivirus 2005
MS Office 2003
Roxio8

The Games:
World of Warcraft
NFS: Most Wanted

The problem:
This is not the first time it happened. Its happened twice or thrice before and everytime i ended up replacing some hardware that i thought could be faulty and reinstalled windows. This time i have almost everything brand new in the box. The manufecturer has individually tested every component on a different machine and it all works.

What happens is when i start up the computer, it reaches the logon screen here it might reset or it will alow me to login. as soon as i click login and see my desktop wallpaper suddenly it will reset and begin reooting.

I will greatly appreciate if some one can guide me on hw to fix this...i love playing WoW and during weekly patches play Need For speed. My wife uses profile to store all the afamily pictures and burn CDs etc from the cameras.

i am suspiscious about the Siemens Santis ISDN mmodem since it ocacasionaly hangs the dialup sometimes requires replugging in or windpws restarts. there are times when plugging in the phoneline into the hub will crash windows with a 1 second BSOD flicker.

Can someone please guide me on how i can solve this problem? I am tried of spending money endlessly replacing hardware and reinstalling windows. 🙁

 

[Zoron]

Well, if you suspect the ISDN, why haven't you replaced it yet? I would at least try to get a hold of another one to see if it is causing your problem... or at the very least unplug it and run your computer for a while to see if it still happens.

 

[taimur]

well isdn is working fine on the laptop-unplugging it did not fix the problem, i am just looking for some guidance if anyone know's why this could have happened b4 i sit down and begin windows x installation number xxx

 

[pscowboy]

Constant rebooting is almost always a sign of a corrupt driver needed to complete the boot. Or, an important associated file (dll).

You can try msconfig, and uncheck all Startup programs. Then put them back one by one.

 

[russell]

Constant rebooting is almost always a sign of a corrupt driver needed to complete the boot. Or, an important associated file (dll).

You can try msconfig, and un-check all Startup programs. Then put them back one by one.

another way to find which startup prog. might be at fault is to un check five at a time re boot and if the problem is still there the re check the first five and un check the next five. When you reboot and the problem is gone then you know it's one of those five. Then you can go through each of those five. (less re-booting)

 

[taimur]

thanks guys i will give this a try and post back

 

[INeedCache]

Does it do this in safe mode?

 

[taimur]

ok now its working fine and it doesnt give problems in safe mode. Although turning on the modem occasionally did crash windows it seems the bigger source of my problems right now is the DVD Writer. Is it possible that the modem and DVDRW drive have a conflict of some sort?

I replaced the graphics card and now have a XFX GForce 6800GS. (There was no need, i just got a deal i couldnt refuse)

I wanted to install the graphic driver and whenever i tried to access the driver disc the machine crashed.

i checked windows stability by running various other softwares, browsed and internet and downloaded a few files. Played Quake 4 in max settings at 1280x1024 for an hour, played WoW for another. Absolutely no issues. then i opened My computer and Double clicked DVDRW with the xfx driver disk in it and i got a BSOD.

any ideas?

 

[nilness]

Sounds like you've got a bad driver disc. Simplest way to check that is to try putting another disc in the dvdrw and see if you can access that. If you can't then it's likely the drive that's bad. If you can then it's just the driver disc that's the problem which isn't that big a deal seeing as you can download the latest drivers from the XFX website.

 

[pscowboy]

Take the DVD out, and check it in someone else's machine.

When you upgraded the graphics, did you uninstall the old drivers first in Add/Remove Programs? And then boot up to force the use of generic VGA driver? And then shut down, replace the card, and reboot to desktop without using New Hardware wizard? And then upgraded the video driver in Device Manager? THAT IS THE RIGHT WAY TO DO A NEW GRAPHICS CARD.

Go into Device Manager and uninstall the controller that the DVD is on (in IDE/Ata/Atapi). This is probably the Secondary. DO NOT UNINSTALL THE DVD.

 

[bluescreens]

ok now its working fine and it doesnt give problems in safe mode. Although turning on the modem occasionally did crash windows it seems the bigger source of my problems right now is the DVD Writer. Is it possible that the modem and DVDRW drive have a conflict of some sort?

I replaced the graphics card and now have a XFX GForce 6800GS. (There was no need, i just got a deal i couldnt refuse)

I wanted to install the graphic driver and whenever i tried to access the driver disc the machine crashed.

i checked windows stability by running various other softwares, browsed and internet and downloaded a few files. Played Quake 4 in max settings at 1280x1024 for an hour, played WoW for another. Absolutely no issues. then i opened My computer and Double clicked DVDRW with the xfx driver disk in it and i got a BSOD.

any ideas?

Sure. Open up the dump file generated in (by default) c:windowsminidumps with the Microsoft debugger, do an analysis on it, and figure out what caused the machine to crash.

I doubt it is a problem with the DVD ROM drive (but I could be wrong...) -- It's vastly more likely it's a problem with some non-Microsoft filter drivers on your system. Analyzing that dump will tell you for sure, no guessing required.

 

[dave78910]

i tried installing xp on a second pc.. but anyway

if you have attempted to use any downloaded program that claims i needs to be used in safe mode.. that's your problem.