PC caught in reboot cycle

[Mr.Hyde]

All of these problems sound like electrical shorts. If you've messed around in your case, chances are pretty good you've got a short.
I had one where I could just touch the power button, not press it, and it would turn on. The problem was a dangling molex connector touching the bottom of my case.

[VoXiNaTiOn]

Has she got Roxio/Adeptec Easy CD / Direct CD software installed on the PC UKF? That has been known to cause some problems when shutting down.



Windows re-boots in the event of a system failure, so that can be easily disabled.



(I'm doing this in Vista, but I'll try my best to guess what the way in XP would be)

Right click My Computer, go to properties > Advanced tab > Startup and recovery > Settings

Untick the "Automatically restart" option.


Now try turning the PC off.

[LT Harrison=ORA=]

Originally Posted by Ford_Jam

Sorry for disappearing!

I've found that only pressing the power button once will eventually turn on the computer.
After pressing it, the fans speed up twice, then on the third time the computer will start, without fail, without any extra input from myself.
Would like to include that once the computer is actually booted up, everything works fine, PR works, msn works Windows works. There is nothing out of the ordinary aside from the time it takes to boot up. I'm just worried that it may be showing symptoms of faulty hardware.

Edit: Sorry smart boy, I'm running XP sp3, I didn't realize my profile said that.

This sounds like a failing power supply, do you know how to test it? If not, take it to a shop that can. You may need to replace it.

[LT Harrison=ORA=]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]UK_Force

Here is another one then to answer

My wifes computer, is running XP, and is quite old.

It boots up just fine every time no problems.

When she goes to shut it down, it does a restart, and does not close down.

This happens EVERY time.

I have cleared the CMOS, reset the Bios to default set up etc, but no joy ?




.

You say it's OLD... How long has it been since you defrag the HD? And defrag/clean the registry? If it hasn't been too long then you may want to reformat and start from scratch. That would take less time than trying to troubleshoot and gives you a clean slate. When I used XP, I had to do that once or twice a year. Just remember to back up all personal files/pics/docs first. Then reload programs. Just my opinion.

Oh, AND TURN WINDOWS AUTO-UPDATER OFF!!! That crap will corrupt your OS beleive it or not. Wait for service packs or if you have trouble with certain programs, search the update list for that particular update and just DL that one. Trust me, you will be alot better off, unless you know what your looking at in the update list. Then just DL the ones that pertain to your system functions.