Booting problem

[rob03r]

Ok, well I am pretty much an idiot when it comes to computers, but here's my question, my wife's computer fails to even boot completely when it is turned on. It will get to the black windows boot up screen that you see when you do a hard shut down on the computer, flash that screen briefly, then restart on its own, I don't know what its problem is, but it has become frustrating. I tried taking the cover off and blowing everything out useing canned air, and I tried unplugging everything.

Can someone please at least give me some sort of an idea as to what's going on and what I need to do to fix it?

Thanks

[ronallandottk]

Sounds like either your computer was infected by a worm, or a recent update is causing your PC to continuously reboot. It's possible it can also relate to a hardware fault of some kind. Do you remember what the PC last did before it came down with the symptoms? Did you change any BIOS setting/program setting/hardware configuration/drivers/installed programs?

Before anything else, make sure your CD/DVD is empty, and you don't have any USB drives plugged in.

Try pressing F8 continuously the next time you reboot, and from the menu choose "Last known good configuration".

If the last known good configuration doesn't change anything, reboot, and press F8 again continuously. This time, choose "safe mode".

Run a thorough virus/malware check program to identify any possible infections. Try cleaning the infection if you can and reboot.

If the problem persists, enter the boot menu again as described above, check Add/Remove programs if your PC was recently updated...it may have updated automatically, or see if an unauthorized program has installed itself. Try uninstalling any unauthorized program you came across, or any recent update and try rebooting again.

Worst case scenario, F8 doesn't work and you can't enter the boot menu, much less load last known good configurations or enter safe mode, you may have to reinstall windows, not necessarily format the drive, though if all else fails, you may not have a choice.

Let us know if any of the above helps.

[jh9046]

I have the same problem. What I really need to know is I get an error message and it stays up for bout one-half second. How do I make the message stay so I can read it?

jh9046@gmail.com

[ronallandottk]

Try pressing the Pause/Break key. You need to anticipate when the error message will come out, because if you press the Pause/Break key when you see the message, odds are you'll miss it.