Technical Problem

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Revilo

Grandmaster Knight
Ok, basically when I start up my computer, it sometimes works. However most of the time it just keeps restarting over and over with an interval of anywhere between 5 seconds and 5 minutes. Each time it restarts it makes a clicking kind of noise, and it's really starting to piss me off.

When it reaches desktop it's fine most of the time but very occasionally it restarts randomly.


A screen comes up saying 'Too many cold reset due to BIOS post. System may be incorrectly overclocked. Press F1 to resume.'

Any help? I'm wondering whether re-installing windows would do anything, only problem is I got stuff on here I don't want to lose or that would take a while to replace.
 
Let's see.

Try it with a spare hard disk, if it still doesn't work, (which I doubt it will.) either invest in a new motherboard, processor, or both.

 
Right, you're gonna have to explain that a bit more, I'm not very computer literate.

Is there no other method I don't really want to be shelling out for new stuff unless I really have to.
 
Just updated drivers for my Graphics card after reading what people with the same problem have said, so hopefully it'll do something.
 
Um...I don't really think so, but it could be.  BIOS generally references the CPU BIOS unless otherwise specified.  It could be the BIOS on the GPU (Do they even exist?)

What graphics card are you running?

EDIT:

A quick bit of research.  F1 makes it boot normally?  Does your motherboard have integrated graphics?  In the motherboard BIOS, is there an option to turn integrated graphics off? 

Do you have a spare graphics card?
 
You could always try opening the BIOS and making sure it isnt overclocked incorrectly (or at all). It's what causes my problem, which is similar to yours but WAY less annoying. If I restart the computer after it's run for awhile it restarts endlessly. Actually, try this: Turn computer off. At the plug. Wait for about a minute or two for everything to stop and stuff to cool down a little. Turn it back on. See if it restarts. If this fixes it, open the BIOS and check the settings. Its very possible the thing to scale GPU voltage with processor speed is turned on, since it is by default. Thats very bad.

Sorry for lack of specific names, havent been in the BIOS for awhile.
 
If the card is a Radeon, CCC allows you to check the GPU clocking right from your desktop.  I have no experience with ASUS, NVidia, and Intel though.
 
Its still worth checking to make sure the PCI voltage scaling isnt on. That's more of a generic PSU thing, so it probably wouldnt show up in that. Dunno, never had an ATI card.
 
Clicking sound makes me think it's maybe the hard drive. Can you identify where exactly on the computer the clicking sound is coming from? Also when you first started describing your problem it sounded like a BIOS problem to me, up until you mentioned clicking, as a BIOS error is generally communicated with beeps. Nevertheless, you might want to try flashing your BIOS, assuming you're computer literate enough to know what your firmware type and version is, and how to flash your BIOS.
 
Have you ever shut off your computer while BIOS was running, because if you did you may need to get some serious work done on it.  I've done it myself and it took me one month to fix everything. (I suck with computer problems.)  I called a computer repair store and they fixed it in a week.  I just spent three weeks messing with it because I'm cheap.
 
Right, I'll try to gather as much info as I can about my system. Also, it sounds like you're gonna have to take me through it step by step, because I barely understood a word you guys said.

Here
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name HOME-E9B358F8A1
System Manufacturer System manufacturer
System Model System Product Name
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 16 Model 2 Stepping 3 AuthenticAMD ~2600 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 0805, 18/04/2008
SMBIOS Version 2.5
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States (eh? I live in England)
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2111)"
Total Physical Memory 4,096.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 2.62 GB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 5.09 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys


That enough information?
 
Could you open device manager and copy the name of your graphics card/power supply/cpu/motherboard?

To get to device manager, go to control panel. Its there. Use category view.

Once you do that, reboot and press F2 when prompted (It comes up at the bottom of the screen for a couple of seconds. Black screen, white writing.) to get to the BIOS. Go to the third (I think. It'll have stuff like voltage and Front-Side Bus in it.) and tell me what you see. If you see something about PCI scaling, turn it off. If you see something about using integrated graphics, turn it off.

Might be wrong, but it's easy to check this since you dont need to open the computer up.
 
Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT
Can't find anything on the power supply.
AMD Phenom 9950 Quad-Core ~2.6GHz
Can't find anything on the motherboard

The motherboard and power supply are probably there, but I just don't know what to look under.

Computer
Disk Drives
Display Adaptors
DVD/CD-ROM
Human Interface Devices
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Imaging Devices
Network Adaptors
Non-plug and play Drivers
Ports (COM & LPT)
Processors
Sound, Video and game controllers
Storage Volumes
System Devices
Universal Serial Bus controllers

Gonna try the F2 things now.

Edit: I don't see anything with the option to press F2 to go to BIOS. I see one saying 'Press TAB to view BIOS POST' but when I press Tab nothing happens and it just carries on booting.
Edit No.2: Just tried the Tab thing again, and this time it went to a black screen. Nothing on it and I couldn't find a way off it.
 
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