Computer died, suggestions?

[Murph]

Last night I was using Firefox, and then suddenly the computer crashed and went into an endless cycle of reboots. Windows would almost load, them boom, it crashes and reboots. Tried safe mode, debug mode, command prompt, nothing works. Can't even get safe mode with networking to allow me into system restore. Looks like Windows died, so its going to be Vista for me it looks like. Darn, I had my XP system so stable.....


Suggestions? This is the system I have all my photos on, including the ones I have not backed up yet.

[pepper52]

Sorry to hear that Murph. Do you have a rescue disk that allows you to load your OS without reformatting your disk? I had to do this to open my system on an older HP.

[Murph]

Nope, this is a home built system that has been running really stable for a while, and all of a sudden it crashed. Firefox 3 died, and that was it.

Originally Posted by pepper52

Sorry to hear that Murph. Do you have a rescue disk that allows you to load your OS without reformatting your disk? I had to do this to open my system on an older HP.

[KdLaneJr]

Open the case. Look at the cooling fan on the CPU and start the computer. If the fan never comes on your CPU may be overheating and causing the reboot cycle.

Don't reach into the case without grounding yourself. We're humid enough to not have alot of static electricity present, but why take chances.

[robert t]

Just went through that, checked ram, fans, OS and finally replaced power supply and it fixed problem. I could not tell and problems with it but it must have hand a stability problem.

[SCone]

Enough space on the drive to doa parallel install? It would allow you to recover your data.

[ldelacruz]

If it is the operating system you should get a new hard drive as the primary drive and setup your old drive as a secondary drive and then you would be able to retrieve your old files.

[Murph]

Tried, all hardware ok. Tried to reload windows on the hd, no luck, would not load. Formated, tried to load, no luck. No idea WTF is going on.

[Dobick]

You are obviously on the internet, so you might try downloading one of the OS's that will run off of a thumb drive, and if you have an external drive attach that as well, and see if you can't at least get the photos off before you start getting draconian with it.

If you can't get the thumb to boot up, then the good news it that it is probably hard ware, and not hard drive related, and the drive might still be good.

Good luck and let me know how I can help?