Endless looping

[Guest]

My PC:

AMD Athlon 2400+
Gigabyte GA-7VA
Twinmos 512MB PC2700 DDR333 RAM
Maxtor DiamondMax9 60GB 7200RPM
geCube Radeon 9200 128MB DDR
SoundBlaster Live! Platinum 5.1 with Front Live!Drive
Sony CD-RW & Toshiba DVD-ROM
300W PSU

This machine has been working fine for nearly a year,
untill recently when it suddenly decided it would like to
crash due to a 'Driver error' and then never load up
again (load windows then cut power to hard drives (or at
least it sounds like that) just before loading finishes
and do it again endlessly).

The only thing that has changed since I first had it is
the soundcard, and I have got the latest driver for it.
It is true this only started happening after i got the
sound card and therefore I automatically assumed it was
this, however it seems very strange that the power is cut
from my hard drives (you can hear them start spinning
from silence when my PC restarts itself). Very strange.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Many thanks.

 

[Guest]

Just want to add:

I have 2 hard drives (forgot to mention the second = 4GB
Fijitsu running RedHat Linux 9).

Also, the thing I'm most interested in finding out is;
If it is the soundcard drivers causing conflicts, what
can I do to sort this out coz they are the most update
(and I don't have the originals)?

Thanks

 

[Ron]

First things first: Boot your machine in safe mode and
remove the sound drivers. Then power down and pull the
sound card from the system. Now...will the machine boot
normally? If so, it is definitely the sound card and
drivers that is causing the issue. Check the sound cards
manufacturer for updated drivers and/or support. If it
does not boot normally with the above removed and
uninstalled, either your registry has been corrupted or
the sound card is not the issue. Hope this helps.