Computer reboots for no apparent reason

[Mike]

Hi,

I'm working on a friends computer, installing Win2000 Pro on a new
HDD. I'm fairly new to Win2000.

Before the install, he had Win98, and the problem was that after
awhile the HDD would make a scrubbing noise, then shut the computer
down. I found that it would do this in the middle of scandisk, and
decided that the HDD was going bad (the PC is a Compaq $500 special).
So, he bought a new HDD from TigerDirect, along with a copy of Win2000
Pro.

I had no problem installing the hard drive, and the 2000 install went
smoothly. So far, I haven't installed anything on the computer other
than Win2000 and SP4.

The problem, though, is that for no apparent reason, the computer will
just reboot. It will do this whether I've opened any programs or not,
and the time between reboots will be anywhere from a few seconds to 15
minutes. I'm concerned that maybe the old HDD wasn't the problem,
after all, but it was definitely making the noise so that would
surprise me. But this problem isn't identical, in that before it would
shut down and stay down, while now it's rebooting.

I've found, though, that if I boot in safe mode, it doesn't have any
problems. I've tried turning off the "Reboot on error" option, and
turned off APM, but that hasn't helped.

Is there a setting that's "on" by default that would cause this? The
HDD is a Seagate 40G, but I used a jumper setting to make it 32G (the
BIOS didn't recognize it until I did that). I intend to download the
40G manager from Seagate once everything's working properly.

TIA for any help thoughts or advice,

Mike

 

[Axel Larson]

Spontaneous reboots often indicate a memory or mother board problem. Many
are triggered by a rise in temperature. You shouldn't need the disk manager
unless your bios is so old it won't support large disks. I'm running a 250GB
under Windows 2000.