Windows XP install shutting down system

[ITDUDE]

Hi Dr. Blip,

I've been having a system shutting down on me everytime i try to reinstall WinXp after a format of the HDD.

I've tried various things and have googled the symptoms and I found a thread of a user experiencing pretty much the same as i have been: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/247730-31-computer-shutting-install

Things I've tried:

• Ran PC-Doc 7 in Dos and passed all tests.
• Replaced the PSU
• Reapplied thermal paste to the CPU
• Used 2 new HDD's, one SATA, one IDE.
• Used 2 different XP disks, and old SP2 and a newer SP3 disk.

Short of replacing the CPU, which i would need to purchase as i have no spare socket AM2 CPU's, i think i have tried everything it could be. Surely PC-Doc would tell me if i needed to replace the CPU, right?

Initially, the PC was in a reboot loop. It would reboot everytime it got to the black Windows screen with the blue progress bar at the bottom. Couldn't boot into safe mode either.

Now this is just to throw a spanner into the works; Windows repair didn't work, however when i tried a chkdsk /r it booted into windows the first time. When i rebooted, it happened all over again just as before. Why i have been leaning to it possibly being the CPU overheating or faulty?

I'm sort of at a loss at what else to try. Any advice?

[fwilson]

ITDUDE,

What type of Motherboard, CPU and Video Card are you using?

If the CPU or ram was faulty PC-Doctor should find it.

The first thing I would do is remove all PCI/PCI Express cards in the system.  If you are using a video card try the onboard video if you have it or a different video card.  I say this because many years ago I had a similar problem and it turned out to be the video.

-Fred 

[ITDUDE]

Hi Fred,

It's an Abit NF-M2SV motherboard with on board VGA. The CPU is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ (at least, that's what it comes up as in system config anyway).

There are no PCI/PCI-e cards.

I've just had it running a system load test for 24 hours and stopped it to get the CPU info for you (is was 81% complete). Just curious, is this a stress test of some sort? If so, i would have expected some error show if the issue I'm having is hardware related.

[fwilson]

ITDUDE,

Yes it is a type of stress test, it is useful in uncovering thermal and intermittent issues.  It does not run all the PC-Doctor tests though it is designed to create a simulated load on the system.

For diagnosing problems like this I would run all the tests from the diagnostics menu with the loop count set to zero (for infinite loops). 

It does sound like you are having a driver issue, where everything works on install but then fails when XP is loading up for first run.  Have you checked for an updated BIOS on the ABIT site?  That may help

-Fred

[fwilson]

ITDUDE,

Yes it is a type of stress test, it is useful in uncovering thermal and intermittent issues.  It does not run all the PC-Doctor tests though it is designed to create a simulated load on the system.

For diagnosing problems like this I would run all the tests from the diagnostics menu with the loop count set to zero (for infinite loops). 

It does sound like you are having a driver issue, where everything works on install but then fails when XP is loading up for first run.  Have you checked for an updated BIOS on the ABIT site?  That may help

-Fred