I have a computer here that just seems to keep rebooting. I don't understand why my supervisor wants me to fix it, as it's at least seven/eight years old (it's got one of those huge ass heatsinks on it, dead giveaway for a Pentium II). Anyway, the motherboard is covered in grimey brown shit (as is most of the computers out there [I work in the office section of a forging plant]), which has miniscule amounts of metal shavings. It's definitely not good for the motherboard to have this stuff, but I wouldn't think it would cause too many problems. The way Windows 2000 reboots right after loading up tells me it's a software problem (of course). Any suggestions? PS. I'm not as stupid as I sound sometimes. My supervisor loves giving me pointless shit work (fixing ancient computers), usually stuff he couldn't fix himself.
overheating possibly? you could test it by booting off of another hard disk and seeing if it takes same amount of time to restart.
Didn't the Sasser virus do something like that? Or some other virus? You should get some up-to-date anti-virus program running on it if you can get anything running.
I can't right now. I'm going to ask him tommorow (he left about 30 minutes ago) if I can just format the computer and reinstall Windows. I don't like dealing with this kind of stuff.
If it is the Sasser virus (or variants), it can be removed easily. Oh - just remember to not connect it to any network, because it's only when it's on one does it do that resetting crap, IIRC.
It doesnt have to be a software problem... perhaps there is some RAM/bus error that is not noticeable during the POST. Try running memtest86 from bootable floppy/cd.
