Win98 partly boots then resets, starts boot then resets

[Tim Amatt]

Oh this has me tearing my hair out!
For no reason I can see except I must have done something it did not like, now when I try to boot Win98, the boot starts, the Win98 logo appears, screen, booting with antivirus starts, goes to black screen then resets...over and over again. So I restored an earlier GHOST image that I know works fine - same result. So, I formated the drive, used a Win98 start up diskette and went to do a clean install from the Win98 CD. As soon as it got ot the point where it reboots itself during installing files, BANG! it went into the part boot, reset cycle again. I ran a diagnostic on the drive. No probs appeared. I did a scandisk, again nothin, I tried changing the drive to the other IDE channel, no change. I upgraded the bios successfully, no change. I tried formatting again and then restoring an image from GHOST, no change. Now! the XP system on another drive works fine before BIOS flashing and after. Must be something very simple, but now I know that I know nothing. Any ideas?
Thanks
Tim:mad:

[The Dude]

Welcome to daniweb!

I was gonna suggest you try to RESTORE YOUR REGISTRY and see if that works.......

Im not sure whats causing it..Have you recently cleaned inside your tower and forgot to make sure everything was tightly in place??

Good luck!

[Tim Amatt]

Welcome to daniweb!

I was gonna suggest you try to RESTORE YOUR REGISTRY and see if that works.......

Im not sure whats causing it..Have you recently cleaned inside your tower and forgot to make sure everything was tightly in place??

Good luck!

Thanks for that. Well I have been trying to transfer XP system to a new bigger hard drive, this involved unplugging the drive Win98 is on and plugging it back in on several occasions. However the XP system drive works fine but when I exchanged that drive for the one Win98 is on, the same boot problem was still there. I have tried re-installing from the Win98 CD but the boot fails whenver it reboots during the installation process. What kind of parts might have become disturbed, for instance.
Thanks
Tim

[The Dude]

Well one time when i was cleaning my tower i pulled the memory card and put it back.. When i booted up all i got was BEEPING.. (I didnt push it down in all the way) Thats 1 thing anyway you might check.....

[NLeeC]

Oh this has me tearing my hair out!
For no reason I can see except I must have done something it did not like, now when I try to boot Win98, the boot starts, the Win98 logo appears, screen, booting with antivirus starts, goes to black screen then resets...over and over again. So I restored an earlier GHOST image that I know works fine - same result. So, I formated the drive, used a Win98 start up diskette and went to do a clean install from the Win98 CD. As soon as it got ot the point where it reboots itself during installing files, BANG! it went into the part boot, reset cycle again. I ran a diagnostic on the drive. No probs appeared. I did a scandisk, again nothin, I tried changing the drive to the other IDE channel, no change. I upgraded the bios successfully, no change. I tried formatting again and then restoring an image from GHOST, no change. Now! the XP system on another drive works fine before BIOS flashing and after. Must be something very simple, but now I know that I know nothing. Any ideas?
Thanks
Tim:mad:

My computer had a very similar problem. I would try to shut down using the start menu and all I got was a restart. The restart worked just fine. I visited MS site where it said that if the FAST BOOT option was checked, this problem would often occur.

[Chaky]

Tim, there could be number of reasons for this:
- overclocked machine
- lack of cpu/memory voltage (dying PSU)
- bad RAM sticks
- motherboard damage

I suggest that you disable "quick boot" in your BIOS. It might pick up the problem (no quick boot = extended POST)