I have 1 mole of hatred for my computer

Looks like I’ll be formating this baby soon, but I have 1 tiny problem: I’m taking a writing class right now, which means I need this mother fucker.

Thankfully my mom (who’s run the computer troubleshooting Q&A where she works) managed to get windows and my internet back up for this windows. All we know is that there’s either something wrong with my registry, config or autoexec, but I’m really not sure how to go about it. Any help that doesn’t involve formating my hd would be welcome.

No posting that doesn’t relate to my comp will be allowed. It will be considered spamming and I will warn you if not ban you for ignoring a warning if you don’t post relevant info if you post something in this thread

So what’s the problem with my pc? I restarted it and it kept restarting. Every time it’d hit windows loading (I have win 98) it would go back to the opening thing where it tells me what my hds and cd drives are.

Just reinstalling windows over windows should do it.

I’d like to help, but first you’ll have to be a bit more clear as to what your problem is - is that your only issue? That it keeps on starting up and then rebooting again?

From what little you’ve told us, my first guess is either your autoexec (which unless you’ve been fooling around with it, I don’t see how it could be a problem), or perhaps it could be a problem associated with RAM.

Xelo: explain how that works and how I could get rid of the defunct version of windows. I don’t think its the RAM because we sorta got windows working. Its something in the start up.

Windows NT/2000/XP
a) Boot from CD.
b) Install.
c) Select Repair.
d) You’re done.

Windows 95/98/Me
a) Run setup again.


That’s how I recall it: Some time since I’ve done it, though, so proceed with caution.

How long have you allowed your computer to go without a format? I personally reccomend formatting computers at least twice a year: It keeps them fast, clean, and quite often, stable.

Is your drive partitioned or is it just one huge drive letter with all your files and the OS on the same letter?

Try getting a boot-up disk from a friend with the same OS.

It has to be a problem with the registry, or it could be a hardware problem. Have you made sure that the connections to your HD & RAM are all the way in?

Originally posted by Uriel
It has to be a problem with the registry, or it could be a hardware problem. Have you made sure that the connections to your HD & RAM are all the way in?
Hardware problems are usually detected in the initial BIOS test.

Tell that to the shitty comps in my hardware class.

if the problem is simply cause by a missing or damaged file then running the windows setup to repair windows might work, however if the problem is more complex then formatting might be your only option, the windows installed is uaully very bad at correcting errors and will sometimes just skip over a damaged file instead of replacing it. Formatting it a drastic solution, but it always works.

The key thing that you have to remember is what to back up, first be sure you have access to a second drive or partition on which to back your files up the following is a list of the things you want to pay attention when you back up, its the kind of stuff that’s so obvious that you don’t think of it, and from my experience you’ll always forget one thing you really needed:

  1. My Documents
  2. Internet Favorites
  3. Internet Downloads / ICQ Downloads (or what ever messaging system you use.
  4. E-mails.
  5. Address book.
  6. Music.
  7. Saved games (if you want to keep any)
  8. Program cracks or ISOs that you’ll probably never find again.
  9. Your windows cd-key (I have it writen in a txt file in the cab directory so I can get at it in DOS)
  10. Anything else you might consider important.

Formatting is a big deal and I can almost guarrantee you that a few days after you format you’ll want something that you were so sure you had that you never even tought of backing it up. You’ll usually loose something important, but if there’s no rush and you have time to prepare the you can minimize how important said item really is.

Another possibility is your power supply unit may have gone slightly bad. If it can’t supply enough power the computer can randomly restart. It could be the windows startup pushing the power supply over the limit. Fixing would require replacing the power supply. Since this isn’t certain, you can try taking a power supply out of a computer that is working and put it in this one to see if it works. Just make sure the replacement is rated for the same or higher energy output (measured in watts, ie 300 watts, 350 watts, etc)

I seriously doubt that the problem is with the power supply, the pc rebooting suddenly is usually cause by a sudden error, catastrophic windows error, not necessarary a loss of power.

And believe me, if you see this then you better believe that it’s time to format and now.

I’ve had this problem before. Thankfully I have a copy of Win98 CD in my HD, so I booted to DOS and reinstalled from there. Try reinstalling your Win, might work.

My english class makes it so its not an option for me to format right now, esp with a paper due tomorrow. I was going to format in the near future (I have a nice external 40x burner sitting next to me for that), but now’s not a good time.

I highly doubt its the power supply because playing with the step by step config (you know where you choose safe mode, normal mode etc) got me back into semi normal , non-safe windows. The computer doesn’t restart randomly, its a systematic thing if it tries to load normally; it’ll hit windows loading when you boot the computer and go back to the original screen when you first boot it up. Up to now, the best idea I’ve read is to try the boot disk thing. That has issues of its own due to the nitpickiness of my floppy, but hopefully I’ll be lucky with one of the few diskettes it likes. I might try to format it this weekend though… I have a long weekend because of the 4th of july. If I do format, I’ll need some info on that. I’ve never done it o_O;; . All I know is what DS said, back everything up. Thankfully, I have everything neatly organized, I can just group the folders in order.

Have you already tried running windows in safe mode?

Sometimes when I reboot to play dos games, the computer gets ‘stuck’ trying to run them and keeps on rebooting. I usually go to the command prompt, edit autoexec.bat, and remove the problem lines. Have you looked at that yet?

Xwing1056

It needs to be formatted anyway. I think the autoexec.bat might be a problem , but I dont know what I need to edit. Thats one of the problems Im facing (other than the lack of apostrophe on my current pc). Anyway, lost internet connection on my pc and reinstalling windows 98 didnt work. Safe mode works btw. I also loaded windows by doing the line by line yes or no thing.

Well, if it works in Safe Mode, could it be some drivers or something? It seems like that would be the problem since it’s working in safe mode- or at least it does to me.

And er crap, I saw a message very similar to that not too long ago Zero.