Random infinite reboot

[G|ass]

I have an AMD Athlon M4 Thunderbird Slot A 1.33 GHz processor, MSI MS-6380, VIA VT8366 Apollo KT266 CPU to PCI bridge, Micron 256MB DDR-SDRAM, VIA VT8233 PCI to ISA bridge, Windows XP Professional build 2600, and an nVidia GeForce 2 MX 200 video card. Before installing XP, this system worked just fine in Windows 98. Now, my XP system reboots infinitely, every time I boot up. Sometimes, I don't even have time to launch a program or access the start menu. Other times, I may be able to launch Internet Explorer, but then the machine stops responding completely, and just freezes for a few seconds. Then it reboots. It is a neverending process. I have tried completely removing the video card, flashed my BIOS to the latest version, installed the latest VIA 4 in 1, and got the latest video drivers from Windows Update and I still have the exact same problem. The only reason I am able to write this now is because I'm using an old Diamond Viper card I happened to have laying around. Might anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to remedy this problem? Thanks.

 

[Lonman]

Go to Control Panel> System> 'advanced' tab> startup and recovery 'settings' button> untick 'Automatically restart' under system failure.

The next time you 'crash' you should get a blue screen with a 'stop' code and a device driver 'may' be named... give us that info (the stop code and driver). That will narrow the playing field WAY down.

 

[G|ass]

I tried going into the BIOS and disabling the "1T DRAM Command Rate" option, then loaded up some old 21.83 Detonator XP drivers from nVidia and my system appears to be working fine now. I have unticked the "automatically restart" option just in case, but it would appear the problem is gone. I'll let ya know if it happens again. Many thanks.

 

[Lonman]

Check out this article:

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=64

It seems you may have stumbled on your own solution to the problem, good work.