PC Issue - Reboot Loop

[cb600fshornet]

Running XP Home

Wasn't quite sure what the problem was , Hardware or OS.

Basically, PC loads up past the bios screen, and asks if I want to start windows normally, in safe mode etc.

If I select normally, it just reboots, when I select safe mode it gets to mup.sys, and just reboots. No error message, no delay, just reboots.

I tried to install ubuntu, and the installation was taking absolutely ages to load up, hard drive doing nothing, disc stopped spinning.

The windows disc loads, but it takes absolutely ages to load at 'Starting Setup,' and the disc starts spinning, stops, starts again multiple times.

In the initial repair section, I tried fixboot, fixmbr, chkdsk and chkdsk /r, and not one of these has fixed the problem. I have also tried using the recovery partition to restore the system files and drivers, but it still does not work. I have also rebuilt the system hive in command prompt.

Finally, I tried installing XP on the PC, I selected quick format, which it ran through, and then it takes absolutely ages to even get to 10 percent copying files. I have done a very large amount of re-installs, which is part of my job as an IT apprentice, and they all seem to copy the files much more quickly.

I'm using a USB CD Drive as it has no internal one.

Laptop Specs:

Intel Celeron 1.3GHz
40GB HD
256mb RAM


My thoughts are that it is a Harddrive issue, but maybe you guys can propose some other solutions.

Thanks in advance.

Joe (A confused apprentice )

 

[jmacavali]

Well the RAM amount would be an issue in the future if you want to keep using it...

But I agree that it could be the hard drive however I'd like to see what happens if you try a different CD Drive or a different CD (if you have one) to verify it's not the CD Drive.

 

[OhSnapWord]

Sounds like the early stages of hard drive failure. Usually when a drive is on its way out, access to it is slower than lava flowing down the dark side of an iceberg.

 

[cb600fshornet]

CD drive is fine in other machines. Disc is also fine in other machines.

 

[chirkware]

I agree that the hard drive is probably this issue. Most hard drive manufacturers have a utility to test their brand of hard drive with. Western Digital = Data Lifeguard Diagnostic, Seagate = SeaTools, etc.

I would download the appropriate utility and run a thorough test on the drive.

256Mb RAM...woefully inadequate for XP once all the patches are in place, unless you can seriously tweak it (512Mb is doable, but I wouldn't want to have to). Hope it's upgradeable, but from the specs, it sounds like this is a 8 +/- year old laptop. Hope it's at least DDR RAM, not SD RAM or rambus (not sure if that was ever put in laptops).

 

[cb600fshornet]

It's probably not gonna be used, it was just to have a play around with really

As for the 256mb RAM, I turned the Auto Updates off so Windows XP SP3 cannot sneak on

Yeah, my diagnosis was the hard drive, just wanted some other opinions, guess you guys think the same as me