restarting again and again.

[lungsucker]

Hey guys, I read the threads here on pc restarting but everyone seems to have a different answer. I work at a bank. I deal with sla's which leaves no time to troubleshoot. my problem is a IBM net vista. I believe its a pent 3 with 512 mb ram. Cd and floppy drive. Video is on board as well as sound. The pc is going through post fine. It starts to boot windows(the point where windows is booting with the bar across the bottom). It will just restart and go back to the Ibm splash screen and run post and again start to boot windows. I have replaced with a new MB. New Ram stick. I thought maybe HD, so I stuck a new one in and started to reimage but it just reboots again. I originally thought psu but didnt have one to use, thus trying the other stuff. I even changed out the processor. I do have two other net vistas but they are both doing the same thing. I took the psu out of both of them and tried them. The pc still reboots. There is nothing left to replace. Any suggestions. Thanks

Also, there hasnt been anything new added in months, nor updates.

[BipolarBill]

Nothing? How about the motherboard? Have you checked for bad caps?

www.badcaps.net

Software corruption is very possible too. Have you tried reloading Windows? Checked for malware?

[lungsucker]

yes, I stated that I had put in a new MB. The caps look fine. Also new ram stick, New HDD.

[BipolarBill]

Must be software corruption. Have you reloaded Windows on one as an experiment?

Malware? They may be infested. What do you scan with?

[lungsucker]

yes I put in a new hard drive and started the reimaging process. After post, it came up with windows boot screen and again shut down and started running post

[BipolarBill]

A little history is in order.

1. Did they all start doing this at the same time?

2. Has there been any common hardware changes among these units? Software?

3. Does the re-image do the same thing immediately or after doing updates?

4. Does the image have SP2 intergated? I ask because there was a worm that affected XP and caused instant reboots. Disconnecting the network cable on startup would prevent the worm from affecting XP and allow you to determine if this is the problem.

If that isn't it, start in Safe Mode (F8) and go to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup and Recovery.

Untick "Automatically restart".

Hopefully, you'll get a blue-screen error with a message next time. Note the complete error.

[lungsucker]

The breakdowns have occured over a year period. Never got a ticket on them so didnt try to repair them. No hardware has been put on them. Original from factory. No new software has been put on this one in months. When I say software, I mean updates , except windows updates.
Referring to the new hdd and the image. I never get the image on it. We image it by putting a disk in cd drive and also via network. It is sp2.
I turn on pc, The post will run, the cd starts to spin. I get the windows logo screen and then it shuts down again. Just like when I have the other hdd that was in it. I never get it imaged. I would try the startup/recovery tip, but I cant boot into any mode with the original hdd. It doesnt get the os loaded and of course the new hdd isnt imaged yet because it keeps shutting down

[BipolarBill]

Hmm....is it possible that the CD image is bad? When was the CD made? Recordable CDs do degrade over time - unlike OEM CDs. If it happens over the network too, the image may be bad.

It just doesn't make sense that this should happen after all the hardware swapping.

[BipolarBill]

Wait, you didn't try a PSU yet? They suffered from bad caps too.

[TimeDeatH]

Not really up to date with the old lappys, but are you trying to run vista or is that part of the name? If you are trying to run vista your not meeting the requirements.

If im wrong about the name feel free to explain to me. Me needz to have more learnz!