Computer restart failure

[Hodsocks]

I am not sure if this is a hardware or software issue but it has me puzzled, basically the computer will not reboot but halts part way into booting into windows, sometimes at the initial windows xp screen except the screen is very dark and faint, sometimes it just stops at a black screen. If I switch it off leave it for a bit and switch it back on again it will happily boot into windows and runs fine.
Thinking it may be a windows problem I reformatted the new hard drive and reloaded windows but still the same problem. I have checked the memory and hard drive and as far as I can tell everything appears to be OK.
This computer was originally given to me to replace the hard drive as the original one had failed although the pc would restart without a problem.
Hopefully one of you guys has some words of wisdom for me.

 

[raybay]

Since it came to you with this problem, then you have some clues...
This is not a Windows Error... and may be difficult to track down.
Clean the case... NOT with a Vacuum cleaner. NOT with compressed air. A rag with denatured alcohol and a can of dust off would be good tools for that.

Then, once clean, I would suspect the cables, the cable sockets, and the power supply.
Remove and reseat every cable. Replace the Ribbon cables if EIDE and not SATA
If SATA, they are infamous for having bad cables... replace them and do NOT go cheap... Good SATA cables cost money.
Replace the power supply to test. Does it work better with the different power supply? If so, replace.
Please let us know what happens.

 

[Hodsocks]

Thanks for your comments Raybay but I finally got to the bottom of the problem. the mobo was an ASUS K8N and the new hard drive was a Seagate 80GB SATA 300 drive, I cured the problem by putting a jumper on the drive to bring its speed down to 150.
I have never had problems fitting faster drives to older motherboards before, obviously the K8N is fussy about hard drives. Well you learn something new every day.

 

[raybay]

Thank you for this update... good information we both should have caught... But ASUS boards often have a lot o peculiarities that are not so obvious... You almost have to read their manuals to find out what to check, and what to do differently... on many boards, they actually tell you which brands of memory they will support.
Other boards make it easier to switch to the 150 or 300, and remind you when they detect.