Alright, I recently formatted my computer and reinstalled Windows XP. Everything went normally, and the computer was working great for the first couple days. Now, it will restart itself automatically. It did this a couple times and Windows tells me that it is recovering itself from a serious error. Or something along those lines. It did this a few times, telling me it could have been from a recent hardware change. Now, I can't even start the computer. When I turn it on, it doesn't go throubh BIOS sometimes, it does nothing. When it does go through BIOS, it informs me of a problem and asks me if I want to start in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, Start Windows from the last settings that worked, or Start Windows normally.

When I clicked on Start Windows normally, the whole thing just freezes. Nothing happens. When I click on start from the last good settings, it goes on like it's booting up, but when it gets to the point where it starts to load the desktop, it restarts. Does that over and over again. I tried to click start in Safe Mode and all that happened was a scroll of file locations.... all of them in the System32 folder. Drivers??

Anyway, I don't know if it's a virus, if something went wrong when I reinstalled Windows... anything. I'm clueless. Any computer guru's out there that can give me some advice/solutions? I'm rather broke right now, so taking it to a shop is out of the question.

Thanks in advance...

 

Sounds like the virus that's been going around.

If that's not it, could be a heat problem, more than likely, it's the virus.....

 

I'd definitely say it's that virus going around. The problem also happened to my friend. He ended up reformating the hard drive and reinstalling windows. Everything on his computer is now okay.

 

I've formatted twice now, I'm still getting errors.

During the install of Windows XP just now (after formatting again), It got to the finalization part and then an error popped up saying something like

"Could not copy file <filename>. Make sure CD labeled Windows XP is in the drive."

Well, that CD is/was in the drive and when I clicked Retry, I got a blue screen. Told me that Windows is shutting down because of an error so that it doesn't damage my computer followed by this:

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Maybe I should just scrap windows and go with Linux.

 

Sounds like the virus to me too.

Norton go there and download a patch for the virus. I think the one that cause the comnputer to restart was called blaster, or something along those lines, not sure on that though. If you have an anti-virus program run that asap and see if it can get rid of it.

 

if it doesn't go thru the bios then your problems are worse than the mainstream viruses that have been going around. You either have a hardware problem or a very serious virus.

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL usually points to memory chip errors from my experience.

 

being unable to copy files from a read-only media indicates possible memory errors too.

 

also, the virus wouldn't suddenly reboot the computer, it shuts it down properly. it's attempting to patch the whole that let itself in, then it has to reboot for the changes its made to take place.

 

Ok, after trying many things, I did a chkdsk c: /p

That took a while, but it reported that it found and fixed one or more errors.

I then went on to install windows xp and all went well. Didn't get any error messages or anything. Infact, I'm on the computer right now typing this... however, I did go to microsoft.com to download that critical update that protects against the blaster.

It downloaded fine and after the install I was prompted to restart the computer. It restarted fine, but then once it got to the desktop, it restarted again... and I got the "Something happened. Restart in safe mode, safe mode with networking, safe mode with command prompt, last good settings, normally" thing. I clicked on start normally and then it prompted me that Windows could not start because the following file was missing or corrupted:

blablabla/system32/ntoskrnl.exe

Does that give anyone a better insight as to what my problem be?



Thanks.

 

I think there's a problem with your motherboard or hard disk. XP/Win2k will automatically reboot if there's a major system crash. Sometimes you'll get a blue screen flash before it automatically reboots. There's a setting that instructs the OS to do this.

What kind of board is this? I would check the manufacturers web site and flash the bios. Then remove all PCI devices (except for video) and install XP again. Once you get the bare bones system stable, start adding cards in one by one.

Good luck.