Computer rebooting and I don't think it's a virus

[Wycen]

My other computer seems to have spontaneously developed a very aggravating problem. Last night I was able to use it for about 30 minutes normally, until it just rebooted. No BSOD, just dumped to the loading screen then to the safe load menu. Now it just constantly reboots, if it even gets to the safe load screen, if it gets past that it give me the error message:
"While initializing device CONFIGMG
Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer.
System Halted"

I've looked up that error message and it says a problem could have developed in my L2 cache or motherboard.

I also think maybe the power supply could be at fault, looking around at other people's problems similar to this.

Anyone have advice on this? The problem is, I can't get the system to load to any sort of mode before it decides to reboot again. I think even if I used a boot disk it would do the same, though I suppose that would be my next step.

Thanks

 

[Skullfyre]

Just to be on the safe side and verify that your machine is not infected....

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

run that program(if possible) it will look for about 44 of the nastier viruses

What operating system is running on it?
Has it been updated lately?
Motherboard make?

 

[Wycen]

Just getting the machine up to run that was the problem.

After opening the case and blowing out all the dust I reseated the video card and rebooted. Got a different error message, but it said the same thing, to reboot, so I did and got booted in safe mode. I then shutdown and restarted and it booted normally. Then I scanned and ran Adaware while it was up and the only suspicious file was something either from or claiming to be from microsoft updates.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Just getting the machine up to run that was the problem.

After opening the case and blowing out all the dust I reseated the video card and rebooted. Got a different error message, but it said the same thing, to reboot, so I did and got booted in safe mode. I then shutdown and restarted and it booted normally. Then I scanned and ran Adaware while it was up and the only suspicious file was something either from or claiming to be from microsoft updates.

I've seen this before. If you're running XP, put in the XP disk, boot to the cd, run the recovery console and run CHKDSK. You possibly have some corrupt files and this will fix the problem.


If you have Windows 98, upgrade to XP.

 

[Painfully]

I had similar problems where my computer would spontaneously reboot itself for no reason whatsoever. It turned out to be some corrupt sectors on my main harddrive.

It's also interesting to note that hard drives are usually the first part to fail in most new computers. Backup those important files!

 

[d20Dwarf]

I had this problem when I ran ME and after I replaced the bad RAM and upgraded to XP it hasn't happened since.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I'm not sure, but it sounds like it may be the Blaster worm. The following quote is from Microsoft's Security page http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp

Typical symptoms may include Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems rebooting every few minutes without user input, or Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 systems becoming unresponsive.

If it is Blaster, it's a big pain in the a**. We had literally over 100 PCs that I had to fix last fall because of it.

 

[Psionicist]

It can also be hardware problems.

Usually when a computer reboots without any particular reason the power supply is damaged. Install another PSU and see if it helps.

 

[Cergorach]

Had a similar problem recently, it was my HD. Have you had any problems recently where the HD was very slow? If so, start from a boot disk and make backups of everything asap. Your HD might be preparing a permanent trip to the Elysian fields...

 

[r2rknot]

or if you are running XP you might have a very simple problem.....you computer dumps teh cache and reboot with EVERY error.

1Right click on the "my computer" icon in your startup menu...
2selevt 'properties'
3go to the 'advacned' tab then select the 'settings' button under startup and recovery.
4uncheck 'automaticaly restart'.


There ya go!

Doesn't apply if it aint XP. (home or PRo)