Why's my PC rebooting?

Blitzkrieger

I recently added a third hard disk to my PC, so now I have a IDE master, IDE slave and a SATA which came with no jumpers at all but is on a totally different interface anyway so I don't think it matters. I actually installed it ages ago but never got around to formatting it. I went and installed drives for something else and everything got fupped up. I disconnected the SATA HD while working on the rest and got everything installed and up and running again. I reconnected the SATA HD, formatted it and everything seemed to be fine.........until I tried to boot windows. Now everytime I boot windows in normal mode it resets the PC late in the boot sequence. In safe mode it boots just fine.

Anybody had a problem like this before? It'd seem obvious that it's a problem with the HD, because that's the only thing that's new, but why would it boot in safe mode? The HD didn't have to install any new drivers so that shouldn't be a problem.

Wandering Dazed

Boot the system into safe mode and check for any bangs against any devices. You don't need to set sata drives to primary/secondary as you only have one device per port.

You could also try booting using step by step confirmation to find out what module is causing the restart. Is it bsoding? In safe mode turn off auto restart in system\performance\startup recovery and see if the os is blue screening. Once you have that info you should be able to figure out what is happening.

KdjaCL

Can your power supply manage all the hardware?

kdjac

jesus_thats_gre

Boots in safe mode? Suggests there is enough power there.

KdjaCL

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Boots in safe mode? Suggests there is enough power there.

PSUs dont always give same amount of power , maybe when accessing newest HD PSU just cant cope ehnce reboot.

I would head in the power direction doubt its drivers.


kdjac

Blitzkrieger

Thanks for the replys. Plugged out the cable and it booted in normal mode, then installed some drivers which had already been installed. Atm if I plug out the SATA cable the thing boots, if I leave it in it just resets.

I wouldn't rule out that it's a power problem but I don't think it is. I'm going to whip out a modem or two if I can get my ethernet LAN based broadband working, but the PSU shouldn't be under any strain yet. I'll have a sconce for conflicts in safe mode too.

kasintahan

From your diagnosis it's almost certainly a SATA driver issue.

It could be a bios (sata controller) but I doubt (a new firmware wouldn't hurt though).

Blitzkrieger

I updated the BIOS and installed the latest drivers. No conflicts in safe mode. I tried step-by-step in normal mode. It passed everything it asked for confirmation for, then just went off loading stuff by itself and crashed again. The bootlog had a big list on fonts it couldn't load (why it was loading fonts I don't know) then went on to pass everything again. I tried reinstalling windows with the new HD in. Now it doesn't reset anymore - it gives a BSOD with a vfat initialisation error. I went through the steps on the microsoft website to resolve that - no joy. Basically I'm fupped

I'm going to whip out the new HD again and resinstall windows again. Back to sqaure one