PC Shuts Down at WinXP Loading Screen

[b6fx]

Hi all,

I was cleaning the dust off my PC one fine evening and upon completion, it just shuts down abruptly (power off) at the WinXP loading screen.

However, was running fine in safe mode.

Thinking that it might be the thermal compound getting rusty, I took out the CPU heatsink and reapplied thermal paste onto the surfaces (where the heatsink and the CPU meets). No luck.

I also tried reattaching the components and wires as well as putting a fan next to my unit.

I am absolutely clueless right now and I hope you guys out there can shed some light.

My build is roughly the following (if more details are needed, I am happy to provide):

- Pentium 4 3.0Ghz HT with ArticCooler that runs at 2600rpm (idle temp at BIOS is about 40C)
- 2GB Ram
- Nvidia 6800GS
- 450W PSU

Greatly appreciate responses!

Thanks in advance.

[SiliconJon]

The first thing I would dig into would be uninstalling drivers/devices as it sounds as though an application or driver being loaded in standard boot up mode is kicking off the motherboard's power control circuit or causing a fault that causes the system to shutdown for "safety" purposes.

[b6fx]

Thanks for the prompt reply!

I reckon it would be very tricky to uninstall the drivers and pinpoint the dodgy one so I decided to attempt a system restore but faced another set of problems there.

Is my best bet reinstalling WinXP?

[SiliconJon]

It may be quicker, and that would have been my preferred method in my earlier days. But now that I work on more systems I prefer to isolate the exact issue when possible (though it is not always possible).

You could certainly take that path and see where it leads you - it could be far easier and faster if you don't have much installed on the system.

Keep a log, and install fewer items/drivers at a time, frequently rebooting and logging in the likely event that it was a specific installed driver/app so you can avoid it should you have to re-install yet again, without the offending data.

[Big_Daddy]

It works in safe mode but not in standard mode.

I always look for a virus in that case. Reinstalling XP sounds like wise advice.