Re-booting at startup

[Head Hunter]

I have a strange one. My boss' PC is re-booting at startup. It tries to
boot into WinXP, then the hard-drive slows down slightly, and the PC goes
back through the mem-test and bootup. If you try to go into safe mode, it
starts to boot into WinXP (shows the long series of drivers loading), then
gives a STOP 0X50 in ntfs.sys. Now, according to the knowledgebase, that is
a RAM problem. I now one of the RAM chips was bad (PC has 2 512MB chips,
but was showing a total of 375MB). I removed the defective chip, but it
still bombs.

I have run a mem-test on the remoaining chip, and it is good. I have run a
HDD diag (using a diagnostic boot cd) and the drive is good. Here is the
WIERD part. If I put this drive in a second PC as a slave, it causes the
second PC to reboot. I know the second PC is good because, without the
second drive, it boots fine. Add the second drive, and it causes rebooting
at startup. I have tried adding the second drive as slave on promary, as
master on secondary, and as slave (after CD-ROM) on secondary. Still causes
a reboot.

Last, I have tried to boot off a WinXP CD to do a repair. I give it the
REPAIR selection, the screen goes black, and it reboots.

Is it possible that, when the memory chip went ballistic, it caused some
file to become corrupted, and causes the reboot? But, what would cause the
first drive to cause a second drive to reboot?

Thanks for any help.

 

[bojimbo26]

I have a strange one. My boss' PC is re-booting at startup. It tries to
boot into WinXP, then the hard-drive slows down slightly, and the PC goes
back through the mem-test and bootup. If you try to go into safe mode, it
starts to boot into WinXP (shows the long series of drivers loading), then
gives a STOP 0X50 in ntfs.sys. Now, according to the knowledgebase, that is
a RAM problem. I now one of the RAM chips was bad (PC has 2 512MB chips,
but was showing a total of 375MB). I removed the defective chip, but it
still bombs.

I have run a mem-test on the remoaining chip, and it is good. I have run a
HDD diag (using a diagnostic boot cd) and the drive is good. Here is the
WIERD part. If I put this drive in a second PC as a slave, it causes the
second PC to reboot. I know the second PC is good because, without the
second drive, it boots fine. Add the second drive, and it causes rebooting
at startup. I have tried adding the second drive as slave on promary, as
master on secondary, and as slave (after CD-ROM) on secondary. Still causes
a reboot.

Last, I have tried to boot off a WinXP CD to do a repair. I give it the
REPAIR selection, the screen goes black, and it reboots.

Is it possible that, when the memory chip went ballistic, it caused some
file to become corrupted, and causes the reboot? But, what would cause the
first drive to cause a second drive to reboot?

Thanks for any help.

Not being rude - get him to buy 2 matched sticks and try them .

 

[Head Hunter]

We are doing that. We are sending back the memory for replacement. I am
trying to see if there is something else I can try in the mean time.

However, I have a new strangeness to report. I put the hard drive into an
external drive bay to attach as USB. My PC (the second one) boots fine, no
problems. I attach the bay with the wierd drive, and my PC reboots.

I don't understand why a problem with the first drive would cause my PC to
reboot when it is attached as an external via USB. Really wierd.

 

[Head Hunter]

New info. I tried connecting the drive (still in the external caddy) to
another WinXP machine. Same reboot. However, when I connect to a Win2000
computer, it sees the drive. But, when I try to access, it says the file
structure is corrupted and unreadable. Could a bad RAM chip cause that kind
of damage? I have tried several HDD diagnostic programs, and they all say
the drive is physically OK. Could a bad RAM chip cause FAT or format damage
so bad it causes ANY WinXP connected to it to reboot upon an access attempt?