Hello,
Today I turned on my notebook (purchased from Dell, 5 months ago and running Vista) and the machine only runs for about 10 seconds and then restarts on its own and continues the cycle repetitively. I tried to get into safe mode, but it will not allow me to - the notebook restarts itself too quckly.
On a positive note, I am able to get into the 'boot' menu and 'diagnostic testing' which is illustrated on the top right hand corner of the screen. I entered the 'boot' section, and I inserted a windows XP cd (I only had an oem version of VISTA). I figured I would reformat one of the drives, or load a new copy onto a secondary partition I have, however, once in progress, the cd indicates it cannot find a hard drive and then prompts me to reboot - so much for that idea.
My last attempt was to run the diagnostic testing offered through dell and so I have, thinking the hard drive is the issue. Fortunately it is not and the test ran through all sectors (and the rest of the notebook for tests) and everything passed.
What gives?
I do not download anything that would put me at risk for a virus. I check my daily websites and that's it.
Any help on what else I can do to test it? A friend suggested booting DOS from the cd-rom and seeing if I can locate the i386 (where oem VISTA is kept, supposedly?)
Thanks!
Today I turned on my notebook (purchased from Dell, 5 months ago and running Vista) and the machine only runs for about 10 seconds and then restarts on its own and continues the cycle repetitively. I tried to get into safe mode, but it will not allow me to - the notebook restarts itself too quckly.
On a positive note, I am able to get into the 'boot' menu and 'diagnostic testing' which is illustrated on the top right hand corner of the screen. I entered the 'boot' section, and I inserted a windows XP cd (I only had an oem version of VISTA). I figured I would reformat one of the drives, or load a new copy onto a secondary partition I have, however, once in progress, the cd indicates it cannot find a hard drive and then prompts me to reboot - so much for that idea.
My last attempt was to run the diagnostic testing offered through dell and so I have, thinking the hard drive is the issue. Fortunately it is not and the test ran through all sectors (and the rest of the notebook for tests) and everything passed.
What gives?
I do not download anything that would put me at risk for a virus. I check my daily websites and that's it.
Any help on what else I can do to test it? A friend suggested booting DOS from the cd-rom and seeing if I can locate the i386 (where oem VISTA is kept, supposedly?)
Thanks!