Win ME restarts itself

Is your CPU overheating?

From reading all five pages, Id plug the power supply into a tester first, eliminate that, then test and/or replace the memory. Generally (but not always) constant restarts lead to a hardware failure, especially with older machines.
John

Well... you all were probably wondering what I did with this sick PC. Very interesting, where this trip has taken me, but ! I replaced the RAM today... I was totally convinced it was failing RAM, as I had downloaded a very nice ram checker from mem66.com and upon running those tests... it did show a bad address. Replacing the RAM did nothing... still failing. So... I'm now wondering if it is, in fact, the power supply. ? ? ?

you said you got this machine from someone? was it running when they last used it?

It came to be broke. It's lived a hard life, with novice users, who for much of the PC's life, hit the power button, to shut down Windows... seriously. When I started looking at it, it had ME installed, and I was convinced (as you can read throughout my post on the subject) it was software related. NOT. I formatted and installed 98SE... and it displays the same exact problem, with a fresh known-good installation of 98SE. It will boot into Safe Mode (which it wouldn't in ME), but as it tries to come up into normal mode... it restarts itself before it places any icons on the desktop.

Id say your problem is most certainly hardware related then, and again my two primary suspects are the power supply, and second ram memory. A failing power supply will most definately make the machine continuously restart as it is overtaxed by the harddrive and cd-rom spinning up, as well as the motherboards demands. I believe you said you tested the hard drive, there are utilities available to boot the machine from a cd-rom and diagnose the hard drive's condition.....I doubt it is the hard drive though, as it took your data when you re-installed the o/s. You could also have a failed video card or chip, modem, sound card or possibly the motherboard itself. If there is a small fan over the processor to cool it, make sure it is running. You have to have some kind of video obviously, but you could try eliminating all unnecessary hardware.
John

Well... I just tried removing the modem, and unplugging the CD and even the floppy (for what that's worth), and it still restarted. I put a known-good video card in it, and disabled the onboard, and that didn't help anything. Yes, I have pretty much banged away on the hard drive, and the processor, for that matter, and I'm convinced it's now the PS, or ghosts.

dont forget gremlins.

search on http://www.newegg.com for a power supply tester if you plan on working on computers, either this machine or in the future, theyre a handy inexpensive device that puts a load on the power supply to see if it withstands it, rather than just using a voltmeter to check dc voltage from the leads.

I will have to agree that this is a power supply problem or over heating. Could you switch out the power supply with a know good if you don't have a PS tester? Maybe even a bigger heatsink and fan for the proc?

it maybe the power supply, but I have a PC running in a dryer up on a hillside just on the edge of the mojave desert and it hasn't shut down in the middle of the summer yet (hottest time of the year here). If the power supply goes bad my experience has been, they will not power up at all. I still think it is software related, and everybody is diving to deep to answer the problem. I have had PC's do what you are saying, and it always seems to be software related. Just format the hard drive and start over again with win98, or format and load linux on it

A reformat has already been done on this puter. So software is ruled out. Has to be hardware.

A couple weeks ago, I got 6 new Dells for the company and went to prep them for the network. Instead of using the monitors I got with the computer, I already had an old one near by and just hooked 'em up to that. I went through three of the computers and all three had the same problem. Everytime Windows would go to load, the monitor would click and go black. I thought the computer was shutting down, but actually I had to physically reboot it. Turned out that the older monitor I was using was a plain old VGA and couldn't handle the graphics accelerator. Once I put a modern monitor on them, they were fine.

I doubt that your problem is the same, but it might be worth looking at.

I have formatted the drive 3 times now, and reloaded 98SE three times. It will go into Safe Mode, but not normal. I've tried all the different combinations of startup I can imagine, and nothing has helped. I'm fairly confident, at this point, that this isn't software related. Also, this computer has done this with two different monitor's, so I don't think it's monitor related, either. If it is a bad pS, it's totally freaky, cuz the dang thang runs likea champ, otherwise.. in DOS, and I ran a mem test on the RAM for 71 hours continuously, and it never hiccupped. I ran a 3 hour surface scan, and there again... nothing... but, I'm wondering ... something is causing it to restart when it feels the load of 98SE in normal mode ? ? ? I don't think the problem is heat related... the cover's off and I'm working in a basement, and I live in Colorado, which is NOT the Mojave Desert I, actually, have not done anything to test the PS, at this point. I'm at wits end, and offer beers or soda to anyone who gives me the winning answer

This may be a PITA, but it is an efficient way to rule out may hardware components (but not your CPU, motherboard, or power supply). If you are using a graphics accelerator, try using the on-board device.

If this does work, you would have saved yourself seven days, 34 unnecessary posts, and at least two reinstallations and a format or two.

This PC was using the onboard video... I installed a known good video card, and disabled the onboard. Nada. I purchased new RAM, Nada. I removed the modem (for what that's worth), Nada. I unplugged the CD and floppy (there again... for what that's worth), Nada. I'd think, by now, the only thing left I haven't tried are PS, MB or processor. Because the thing works, all expect for normal mode... I'm having a hard time thinking it's the MB or processor.