Well there are various programs you can download to monitor the temp of your machine. SOme may be more reliable than others but then again, if you are sure that the colling systme in the machine is...

Maybe just maybe there is another issue at work, could it be the power supply being disrupted by some faulty connectors to the mobo which just randomly cuts the power off at start up. It sounds quite...

Yeah making sure you clear out all the dust and fur would be starting step. Also if you do not wish to spend on a cooling station then you just have to take precaution like when you want to work on...

It could be a heating issue as well which might result in shuttin off, restarting at random....

Raj

You would not be able to connect the laptop to the desktop to use it as external drive but you do have a choice of taking hard drive out of the laptop and use it as secondary drive within a desktop...

And how many times have you tried to reboot where it took 3-4 times??? I d suggest to run memtest and check for the ram integrity to make sure that this new RAM is good.

Raj

If all is good then the setup that Sittas explained should take you to the bios screen at the minimum which would rule out the Mobo, CPU and RAM being bad.

Raj

So maybe after gettin the win 95-98 running you may be able to get to the xp somehow. All the best man

Raj

give the guy a call before you set off to his shop for the pc check up and ask him if he has the equired stuff to test your system on. Lets hope he s able to find the issue with it.

Raj

Well i was advised to do so on my laptop that i am trying to revive back from dead with a few odd issues. I didnt really have time to sort it out yet but i hope it works for him as his needs sounds...

Actually what i would suggest is connect the hard disk to other machine and format it, then reload the windows on this disk from the other machine and when the process ends it would ask you to...

It looks like a big watch battery on the motherboard. Have a search on google and they ll even have ste by step instrucions to take it out and put it back in as well mate,

Dont worry about the...

Make sure your data is all backed up as you dont want to lose it in case sommin does go wrong withthe hard disk. Maybe the noise is the failing hard drive then as well.

Raj

You the man Sittas.....thanks

hey hey...I posted a massive post yesterday about the same bit that sittas has just explained, cant see it, m sure i didnt break no rules in that, anyways S***...

Is the power supply enough for what you are doing, i mean it could be that power supply may not be enough. You did not mention what power supply you had before and what you changed it to.

Raj

Basically try to reseat everything just to be sure that no device is loose or anything. Pull the power cables out and plug em back in, data cables, cards etc and see if that gives you some positive...

Yep the best way is to get the data out first by using an external usb station to use your internal drive as external. If you are not too technical about these things then you can take it to your...

Is your computer a laptop or desktop. It could be a overheating issue. Now when does this usually happens, I know you said random, but may be it does this while running a particular program. Also...

How did htis start I mean was it during something that you were running or was it just someday you started it up and there it was. Now i wouldn't recommend you to go have the sony staff look at it as...

Hi Joe

Sorry to hear all your trouble man. First off never ever say yes to any pop ups that say that you have a virus and would you like to remove it. You probably didnt have any virus up until...

Try resetting hte cmos battery as that may help you out in this case. Take the battery out for about 2-4 minutes and then stick it back in and try starting the thing up again.

Raj

It might have affected the connectors to the mobo. If thats the case then you may be able to diagnose the issue by using the voltmeter or the like and test the voltage to the mobo. Also i d say take...

It did sound as a result of overheating though. Doesn't give any other obvious reasons for it. Maybe change the fans to an AC unit...lol.

Raj

How do you mean shadowed?
Is it just dark. You may just need to adjust some settings maybe.

Raj

by bare bones i meant that disconnect all the components.
Just have your PSU, mobo, CPu, CpuFan, Ram and probably the gfx card to see if you get anywhere towards the bios. If that works then start...

Your message says check cable....have you trid swapping cables to see if one of the cables on your system is gone. Could be due to a faulty cable connecting to the HDD or the optical drive. I ll say...

Hi

Can you explain a bit in detail as to what exactly you were doing and which action caused the error to occur, Also tell us what happens when you start it up like can you go to the bios screen...

Yep what houston said, sounds like the hd is giving up on ya. So do the suggested and hopefully you ll have the system up and running soon.

Raj

Dude i'm aware of what you meant and didnt mean no offence, it was just a light hearted humour man. We all need to keep things on the lighter side. Other than that we are all trying to help each...

It might sound a bit odd but you might wanna try to go back to square one and do the barebone start and then procedd from there one component at a time and see if you do get anywhere, It is extremely...

Yeh man, get a hamster or a mouse and do a wheel cage thingy and make sure u stick the cheese a bit far so mouse runs real fast. link the fan and u r sorted....lol

Jokes apart but we have had many...

well i dont personally know anyone who could have a out of use laptop to scavenge from but anyone from UK want to donate theirs then am all smiles man. But i ll look for the adaptor first to see if...

i thought that might do the trick but its a laptop hard disk, now i have opened a desktop lots of times but with laptops i aint sure how it ll connect to another system. I m sure the hard drive ide...

Well in my case i am ready to do a fresh install even but since the cd drive aint working, it looks gloomy to me at present. I dunno if it would do any good by sticking the Hard drive in another...

Well guys, long story short.

Very old laptop, Toshiba Satellite 2400 with intel pentium4 with XP Pro. About 4 years ago i gave it to my brother when it was working just fine apart frpm the CD/DVD...

well keep at it and you ll be where you wanna be mate. Just surf through the posts here on daniweb. a lot of things could be learnt from here man. I wish you all the best for the future.

Raj

well looking at what u posted it seems like the only way out of your problems at present. Well any other problems then you know where to look for help man. good Luck

Raj

~
Under boot Device Priority it had...
1rst Boot Device - floppy
2nd - CDROM
3rd - hard disk
4rth - LAN
~

This is what the problem is, you should have 1st device as the hard disk as thats...

you can always double check by hooking up with another PSU if yu have access to any and see if it brings any change. But yeah make sure you boot it up with just cpu(with heatsink/cooler) and mobo...

if you can't get into bios then you would better off get your data backed up and then do a repair install from the xp pro disk. should not be a big problem. If you want to know about backing up the...