PCTech Forums

We have a computer running windows 2000 that suddenly started acting up. when turning it on it boots to the the white windows 2000 screen then it reboots, I've done a scan disk with no errors and when i attempted to reinstall windows it goes through the complete install and starts to loop between the product key screen and computer name screens. Any suggestion??

Did you run a full scandisk including checking for bad sectors?

Did you format the drive before you tried to reinstall?

This could also be a ram problem if you have 2 sticks of ram remove one and give it a try.

I ran a full scan disk and there were no bad sectors found
Yes I did a format on the hard drive before reinstalling windows
theres only one stick of RAM in the machine but I have some spares that I can try.
Could this be a Mother Board issue?

It could be a motherboard issue but you need to eliminate all the other peripherals first.
First remove any non-vital cards like sound, ethernet and any controller cards and try to boot.

It could be the power supply is going out and when there is more demand it fails.

I’ve seen video cards cause this type of problem when drivers load and the card fails at the higher resolution.

You can check your ram with

Also you might want to check the hard drive with the manufactures diagnostics program.
Just to make sure that it’s not the problem.

It could also be a heat issue. Crack open the shell and check all of your fans, CPU, video and Power /Supply.

Gecko's suggestion of it being the power supply could be it. You really need to shine a light on that fan to see if its moving. Another dead give away is a strong electrical odor.