Major computer problems...

So today my computer was fine and dandy and out of a sudden it crashed (ICQ
stopped responding, email client stopped responding, it wouldn't respond to
ctrl+alt+del either...) so I reset the computer and the next thing I get is
the rebooting would go past the motherboard screen and then go blank and
have "press any key to reboot"....when a key was pressed it would reboot and
go back to the same screen asking to reboot.....
I then turned the computer right off and an hour later got back to it and
turned it back on...it did start windows XP ok but then right after the
computer finished loading all the startup programs (icq, dsl connection,
antivirus) it started behaving weird like as if the electric current was
going up and down and the hard drive light started flicking and staying on.
It would stop responding when that started happening and I was not able to
turn the computer off properly. I turned it off and haven't turned it on
since.
I have a 350 power supply (5 months old), ASUS mobo P4533-E and P4 1.7(both
4.5 months old), a 20 GB HD (3 years old - master) and a 120 GB HD (15
days - slave).
My question is:
What could be causing this failure? Can this be tracked directly to one
part? Can having a power bar sitting close to the computer case cause
problems like this? Is the prognosis bad?

Thank you in advance for any help,

FayeC

Remove all PCI cards (except Video) disconnect hd's, boot from floppy OR F8
just before (if) you see the 'loading windows" text.
OR clear,(or load defaults) the CMOS with the jumper try and boot.

ell" wrote in message
...
So today my computer was fine and dandy and out of a sudden it crashed
(ICQ
stopped responding, email client stopped responding, it wouldn't respond
to
ctrl+alt+del either...) so I reset the computer and the next thing I get
is
the rebooting would go past the motherboard screen and then go blank and
have "press any key to reboot"....when a key was pressed it would reboot
and
go back to the same screen asking to reboot.....
I then turned the computer right off and an hour later got back to it and
turned it back on...it did start windows XP ok but then right after the
computer finished loading all the startup programs (icq, dsl connection,
antivirus) it started behaving weird like as if the electric current was
going up and down and the hard drive light started flicking and staying
on.
It would stop responding when that started happening and I was not able to
turn the computer off properly. I turned it off and haven't turned it on
since.
I have a 350 power supply (5 months old), ASUS mobo P4533-E and P4
1.7(both
4.5 months old), a 20 GB HD (3 years old - master) and a 120 GB HD (15
days - slave).
My question is:
What could be causing this failure? Can this be tracked directly to one
part? Can having a power bar sitting close to the computer case cause
problems like this? Is the prognosis bad?

Thank you in advance for any help,

FayeC

Greetings...

From your description - it sounds more likely that you have contracted a virus.

The repeated reboot message, is usually symptomatic of a corrupted registry - Did this
happen about 5 times? (the standard number of registry backups that windows normally
keeps) - sounds like the virus has managed to get you to get them all!
You mentioned that it did post at one point, and did load startup programs normally, but
then started accessing the HD continuously at which point you turned it off...

While I doubt that you are having a hardware problem, by your description, it is of course
possible...

However without a lot of more detailed information, and going on only what you described,
If I were you, I'd start digging around for the Recovery disk that every good AV package
has you make.... That is of course assuming that you actually have one, and made one...