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Author Topic: Locked up  (Read 2862 times)

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stumped

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Locked up
« on: January 22, 2008, 10:28:11 PM »
My Gateway with XP froze up the other night. I had to unplug it to shut it down.  After restart it shuts off every 25-30 seconds and automatically restarts. The cycle continued for a while then a screen popped up saying Windows is shutting down so that damage to the computer will not occur.  How can I make it stay on?  I want to see what happened.  Can I send external power to the HDD to make it keep going?

Thank You

quaxo



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Re: Locked up
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2008, 11:28:00 PM »
To get to the following option press F8 repeatedly during startup (it'll catch it sometime between the POST and Windows loading.

1. Try booting into safe mode.

If that succeeds, let us know. If you continue to have problems:

2. If you have a Windows CD, try using the recovery console by booting from the CD and pushing R when prompted to.

Giving the hard drive external power would accomplish nothing since the hard drive won't keep the rest of the computer on. The system would still get restarted by Windows.

What exactly were you doing when the computer froze? Anything in particular? Was there anything strange? Any error messages? How long was it frozen before you unplugged it? What are your full system specs? Provide as much information as possible, makes this easier.

homer



    Expert
    Re: Locked up
    « Reply #2 on: January 22, 2008, 11:28:54 PM »
    sounds to me like its overheating. open up the case and make sure all of the fans are spinning. look for fans on the case, the CPU fan, and the GPU *Graphics Processing Unit* fan (if applicable).

    stumped

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    Re: Locked up
    « Reply #3 on: January 23, 2008, 08:40:57 AM »
    Thank you for your reply. The Gateway is a desktop 2.4 with 80G HDD. Nothing special, about 4 years old. When the screen froze there were about 8 web sites open. After the screen froze in position, it took me about 2 minutes before unplugging it. The activity light on the DSL was blinking very fast so I thought I better get things stopped. There were no warnings or anything, the screen just froze in position and the computer completely locked up to the point that nothing worked.

    I tried safe mode the next morning and the computer cycles off to on in about the same amount of time as out of safe mode.  It shuts off before the opening screen comes on.

    The computer was unplugged for two days. After plugging it in and pushing the on button it cycled off and on in the same amount of time.

    I will try to borrow a recovery disk and try that. What do you think happened?

    Thank you for taking the time to give me help.

    Ron

    patio

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    Re: Locked up
    « Reply #4 on: January 23, 2008, 09:03:08 AM »
    What about Homer's questions ? ?


    sounds to me like its overheating. open up the case and make sure all of the fans are spinning. look for fans on the case, the CPU fan, and the GPU *Graphics Processing Unit* fan (if applicable).
    " Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

    quaxo



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    Re: Locked up
    « Reply #5 on: January 23, 2008, 09:06:22 AM »
    Yeah, checking the fans would be a good idea as well.