I just recently ran into a problem involving my 1900+ Athlon XP computer that i've had for a couple years now. It all started when my brother was using it and said it smelled like it was burning, so he turned it off. Everytime after that, it would boot up to the login screen and then instantly reboot, sometimes not quite the login screen, and sometimes even after i'd logged on. But everytime it would reboot.

So i immediately thought that the heating was the problem. I applied some more thermal compound and attempted to reboot. Same problems.

I then checked my bios to see my running temp. It was about 120 F. I'm not sure what to go by but i don't think thats bad. Then i dissasembled everything and put it back together. I'm not sure if this is a grounding problem, a heating problem, or a software problem. Does anyone have any suggestions?

can you get into safe mode? (F8 after BIOS POSTS)

well, i can get into safe mode, but it reboots at the same time as in normal mode (this particular time while i was about to log into windows)

as soon as you get in safe mode select "last good configuration" (quick)

if that doesn't work do you have the original or recovery cd?

you could try to boot that, although you might want to check out your hard drive first. go to the manufacturer's site and look for a download section where there should be a diagnostic program that you could download on another machine and create a bootable floppy to diagnose your drive.

(if that was the "smell")

I have selected Last Good Config. It still produced the same results. I'm leaning towards it being a hardware problem. I'm gonna try reapplying the thermal compound. The funny part is, the rebooting isn't reliant on time. If i stayed in the bios or something, it wouldn't reboot. It only does once i started to get into windows.

i am unfamiliar with the thermal compound.

what make of hard drive?

Western Digital 80gb. Are you unfamiliar as to what thermal compund is or which brand i have? Thermal compund goes on a Cpu and heatsink to keep temperatures lower and transmits heat

here is western digital site for downloads
get the diagnostic tool which you can download and create a bootable floppy to boot the ill machine and test the drive

The Diagnostics utility allows you to test the drive, print results for last drive tested, repair errors found during the Test Drive option and write zeros to the drive. To use this utility, please download the file to your computer. If using the ZIP version of the file, then next unzip the utility. Finally, just run the program "DLGDiagv504c.exe" which will walk you through the steps to create a bootable diagnostic diskette.

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

as to the thermal compound, i was sort of trying to be funny

but i've never heard of it before