Hi

Basically pretty randomly last night after leaving the room for a few minutes I found that my computer had switched itself off and from then on every attempt at starting it up results in a random shutdown anywhere between the Windows XP loading screen and shortly after loading my desktop... I have no idea what could be wrong...

I have tried a checkdisk in repaire console which found nothing wrong.. and a repair installation works until it needs to restart at which point it again shutsdown...

Safemode won't work because I am halfway through a repair install and it refuses to let me in to safemode...

OS: Window XP Home Edition
CPU: Intel P4 3Ghz
HDD: 2 x 300GB
PSU: 530W

not sure what other information it relevant...

Thanks for any help!!!!

Sounds like a hardware failure. The first and easiest test is your RAM.

MemTest
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Try running MemTest.

Ah thanks for the reply, I ran the Memtest that came with Kubuntu (which I used to take some files off my hard drives) all night and my RAM passed the test about 51 times. I have also tested my PSU with the paper clip trick and that seems to be running fine as well.

Running out of ideas, I decided to reinstall windows, but again the computer shuts down in the middle of the installation...

What should I test next?

Thanks for your help!

I'd suggest connecting only one hard drive and try that.

Also if that fails run the manufacturers diagnostic on the hard drive.

Did you have some sort of RAID setup in mind?


In general Setup failures are hardware faults assuming the CD is OK.

I tried connecting only one hard drive at a time and installing windows and it still results in a random shut down in the middle of the installation process....

How would I run a manufactures diagnostic on the HDs? And I dont really know anything about RAID set ups...

Thanks for all the help so far!

Who is the manufacturer of the hard drive?

Does it always fail at the same time?

For example with 34 minutes remaining etc.

Or at what stage does it fail?

If it is always the same what exactly is setup doing at that point in time?

Also please verify that this is a retail XP CD and not a manufactured computer e.g. Dell; HP; etc.

If the above is correct running KillDisk on the hard drive might help although absolutely all data will be lost.

http://www.killdisk.com/



...

I think we have the same problem. When you log in your comp a command prompt will open and automatically shutdown. thats what is happening to me.