Reply #11: HI

[Yuugal]

You'd have to give me the specs of your machine, but one thing you can try straight off is to hold down the delete key during POST(power on self test). That will bring you to a screen where you should pick "restore default settings", then save and exit. The machine will reboot and hopefully you'll get into windows where you can look for conflicts. If you bios is trashed you can flash the new version by getting it from the net, making a boot disk and adding the bios file to it, and then booting from that disk and reflashing the bios.
Before you get all crazy trying the hard solutions though, my experience with building and fixing machines for friends tells me you should check the obvious first:

1) is the power supply fan on? are the vents on the power supply so full of mung(mung is dust mingled with either finger oil or cigarette tar) that air flow is restricted? If so grab a can of compressed air and blow them out. Same goes for the processor fan.

2) have you made any changes to your hardware recently like adding ram or a new processor? Ram that appears seated correctly in its slot but in fact isnt can drive you nuts. A new processor chip that isnt seated correctly against the heatsink also will lead to constant reboots. Thermal paste is a must for installing or reseating a processor chip.

3) did you make any big software changes recently? reinstall the OS maybe? or switch file systems on your HD?

4) if you havent done any changes recently and a problem just crops up out of nowhere like this, its probably a hardware failure: ram, motherboard, hard drive, power supply. The trouble is a bad stick of ram is gonna work right up until the system tries to access the bad area, then poof. Same goes for the hard drive. The power supply will work fine until it overheats then poof, reboot.

If you by chance use an ASUS motherboard, I can write you a book on what it might be. ;)