Well It seems my system is in the tiolet but before I scrap and start over I wanted to see if the PC gods might help.

First my specs

WIn XP Prof - updated and patched
800 mhz athlon
512 ram
2 80gig WD Special edition hard drives
Geforce 4 MX440 card (PNY)
SoundBlaster Audigy 2
MS Lan Card
Adaptec USB2.0 PCI card

Problem first started was that the system would lock up at the windows login screen. Then it started locking up while my desktop was coming up. Then the system started to reboot for no reason. Now the system just powers down, the screen goes black but the system stays on. When I try and reboot the system just runs and does not post. If i pull the plug and let it sit it will post again.

I know this sound like a sysmptom of the worm but I am behind a phys firewall & BlackIce. I have also run the specific tools provided by Symantec for each of the latest worms and according to them my systme is clean.

I have also removed all card minus the graphics card to see if there was any conflicts and it still happens.

Could my motherboard be bad? or is RAM or maybee my power supply is shot (300w) any way to test these? I dont want to buy a new mobo if that is not the problem.

Any help would rule.

Something very similar happened to my pc at work. It would log on, give me a minute or two, then lock up at first. After a short period of time, whenever I tried to reboot, it never made it past the boot process- it would just keep rebooting.

Bad motherboard, my friend.

I'd check and make certain the cooling fan on your processor is working first, I think. If it's not, or if it's really gummed up and isn't moving any air, then the processor will heat up really quickly and can cause the symptoms you're describing. Seems likely to me just because you say that if you leave it turned off for awhile it will at least POST.

If it's not that? Then yeah, I'd say bad MOBO or a processor getting ready to slag itself.

I checked the fan and it seems to be working fine

I have had some/all of those symptoms.

Computer locking at random... reinstall of Win XP Pro.

Computer shutting down/rebooting shortly after reaching desktop/during post... replaced power supply.

I have heard rumours (never validated) of the USB 2.0 drivers conflicting with AMD/VIA drivers or older chipset motherboards.

My computer had been locking up at random since April of last year which I attributed to a worm virus even though I had run two different virus scans (nothing detected) and also behind hardware/software firewall (Zone Alarm Pro). The computer then started shutting down earlier this year as stated above which was attributed to a bad P/S. When I added a 4-port USB 2.0 PCI card (from Orange Micro) (month after replacing P/S), the computer started not only locked up at random intervals, it started rebooting at random intervals.

For reference, that system was a FIC AZ-11E motherboard, Thunderbird 900 MHz, 1 gb PC-133, WD 60 gb HD, GF2 Ti.

I've since replaced that computer but the same system works without problems (after I fdisk'd and reinstalled XP on it). The 4-port USB 2.0 card is not with that system BTW.

Check the RAM.

I recently had a similar problem.

I had the luxury of having swappable HDs & as the prob was the same with either boot drive it was safe to say it was a hardware prob.

Sometimes it would boot so hard that the CMOS would reset.

CURE

Pull & clean every card & connector.

No probs since.

Titus

Try a combination of any of the sticks of RAM you have, trying each one seperately - chances are one of them is faulty, but the others probably ain't.

Next step would be to check the heatsink on the cpu, possibly removing, cleaning and reapplying it with some fresh thermal paste (that white crap can get like chalk if it's too old).

If it's not either of them, then it's probably your motherboard or *possibly* the PSU. Try another PSU if you can steal one from another box or from a friend for a wee while.

~Ment~

WOOT!!

Went out and bought me one of those new-fangled 400W Antec Power Supplies and that has seemed to do the trick. Crossing my digits because this is the cheapest way out


Thanks for all your help lady and gents

Nice PSU, hope it fixes the problems once and for all =).

~Ment~