Windows 2000 won't boot, keeps restarting

[desdgl]

Whats wrong with my PC?

Just recently when I went to turn on my PC, there was a problem with my PC. When I turned it on, it showed the Gateway screen then the little white bar that says starting windows right before the Windows 2000 Professional screen. As soon as that bar goes all the way white, my PC restarts. This is all my PC will do just keep restarting itself. I did press F8 and enter the startup menu for Windows 2000. I tried all of the selections including Safe Mode and Debugging mode, but no matter which one I chose, my PC would still restart. I have the Windows 2000 Professional CD that is bootable and when I put it in I select boot from CD and it starts the Windows 2000 setup for about 10 seconds then restarts the PC. I also tried using the Gateway Recovery CD but after about 10 seconds, my PC just restarted. I removed the hard drive and put it in one of my other PC's as the master drive and the exact same thing happened. Is This Problem with my hard drive or Windows? If I take it out and put it in another PC as a slave drive will i be able to recover any files from it? And, what are the jumper settings for a hard drive?

 

[Didou]

Have you tryed installing another hard drive in your main machine as master & trying to install Windows 2000 on it like that ?

If it still reboots after 10 seconds then it would seem that the problem isn't only related to your HDD. In any case, install your HDD on another machine & try to retrieve your files in order to do a backup. Reinstall that drive on your main machine, do a format of all the partitions ( or even destroy/recreate the partitions ) & reinstall Windows.

What HDD is it BTW ?

For Maxtor HDDs, the master/slave setup is as follows :

[IDE CONNECTOR] [: : : :] [POWER CONNECTOR]

To set the Drive as Master -> ( [:] : : : )

To set the Drive as Slave -> ( : : [:] : )

the [ ] represents the HDD jumper.

For IBM/Fujitsu HDDs ( at least on a 75GXP, it is as such ), the master/slave setup is as follows :

[IDE CONNECTOR] [: : : :] [POWER CONNECTOR]

To set the Drive as Master -> ( [:] : : [:] )

To set the Drive as Slave -> ( : : [:] [:] )

I need to look on my Seagate & WD drives, I'll post for them once I have the info.

PS. Maybe something like "Windows problem : my PC keeps rebooting" would've been a better theard title ?

 

[Didou]

For Seagate discs 20GB & above, the master/slave setup is as follows :

[IDE CONNECTOR] [: : : :] [POWER CONNECTOR]

To set the Drive as Master -> ( [:] : : : )

To set the Drive as Slave -> ( : : : : )

To set it as slave, simply remove the jumper completely.

For WD discs, the master/slave setup is as follows :

[IDE CONNECTOR] [: : : : :] [POWER CONNECTOR]

To set the Drive as SINGLE DRIVE -> ( : : : : : )

To set the Drive as Master -> ( : : [:] : : )

To set the Drive as Slave -> ( : : : [:] : )

Single Drive is when the drive is alone on the IDE bus. If the drive is alone on the IDE bus & you set it to master, it will not be detected.

 

[desdgl]

Hard drive

I have a Western Digital hard drive and the jumper select looks like this: [:::::]
On my older PC that I was going to set it up on the burn my files the jumper selector looks like this [:::], it only has 3 while my other one has 5. The one with 3 is still a Western Digital, hust older. Will this still be able to work with my new one as a slave?

 

[Didou]

So you're saying the new one which is giving problems has 5 pins for master/slave selection & you want to install it on your old machine which has an HDD with 3 pins for master/slave selection ?

 

[Didou]

To set the new drive with 5 pins to Slave, install the jumper on the 4th pin ( 4th from the left & 2nd from the right ). I'm looking for some info on your drive with 3 pins for master/slave selection.

 

[Didou]

According to this image, you need to set the jumper on the 1st pin on the left like this -> ( [:] : : ) to set it as master.

 

[desdgl]

Yes, but i just called up a friend and I'm going to take it to his house because he has a new PC, his hard driveis IBM, but Hopefully this will work.

 

[Didou]

Ok, keep us posted on the results.

 

[desdgl]

OK

I was able to correctly setup the hard drive and burn all my important files on CD's. But now, I can't Install an operating system, my PC still restarts when booting from the Wndows 2000 Pro CD. Is there some way to format my hard drive before running windows setup?

 

[Didou]

If the partitions were in NTFS, you won't be able to delete them with a Win98 bootdisk. Would you happen to have Partition Magic on a machine ?

 

[agissi]

What do you mean it restarts when booting from the cd? You should enter BIOS and set the first boot device as CDROM, go into windows setup, format the HD, then install windows on it. when windows is done installing set the primary boot device as hard drive, and boot into windows

 

[josbd]

Have you changed the settings in BIOS so that it boots from the CDR or CDRW first?

If nothing else works, I can only think of taking your HDD and W2KPro set up disks round to your mate's and installing the setup on his pc........

 

[josbd]

Hehe crossed posting! Apologies.

 

[Didou]

He said it rebooted 10 seconds after the Windows 2000 setup started so I think he does indeed boot on the CD.

 

[desdgl]

Because my PC is a Gateway, they block out changing the BIOS. So, when I start my PC it says press tab to display system messages. If I press tab it lists my systems specs the says press esc to exit and thats all I can do. My PC can boot from a CD. Its just when the blue windows setup screen comes on and starts loading all the drivers or whatever, it restarts. I did have Partition Magic installed on the PC. I also tried using a Bootable Windows 98 CD and setup would just quit after it ran scandisk. Then, I borrowed my friends Windows XP Pro CD. The CD was a burned copy and wasn't bootable so I download the set of WinXP Pro floppy boot disks. There is a total of 6 disks, and on the forth one, my PC restarted and there was a list of operating systems: Windows 2000 Professional, or Windows XP Setup. i chose setup and it says all these errors about missing files. Is there other way to install an operating sysem?

 

[Didou]

What I would do is reinstall that HDD on your friend's PC & destroy/recrate the partitions on it using Partition Magic or another HDD tool. & then reinstall it on your machine & launch the Windows 2000 setup process.