Dell inspiron 3800 constant rebooting

[chupacabra]

Hi,

I have a Dell Inspiron 3800 notebook computer. It is constantly rebooting. It will run for any period of time from a couple minutes to a couple of hours and then reboot. Sometimes, when the power is pushed, the power led light comes on, and the "hard disk active" led, and stays for about 5 seconds, and they both go out with no boot. When that happens, I can usually unplug the AC power, and it will boot up the next time...only to reboot again in a bit. I have reformatted, and changed operating system...(it was XP and I thought it might be too small for that) now it is windows 2000 professional.

Any useful advice would be great.

Thanks,

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Either you have a virus, or it's most likely the power source. Loose wire somewhere is also a possibility.

It will most likely be VERY hard to fix.

 

[chupacabra]

I was reading that a bad HD could cause reboot problems. Is that a possibility? A virus is ulikely as I have done a clean format of the drive. A wire maybe, but yeah, hard to track that down.

thanks