Big problem

My ex has a older Gateway computer (Windows ME) that kept shutting down on her. After she'd be on the thing for 1/2 hour or so, it would automatically restart, and keep doing this every few minutes. Sometimes it would just restart, othertimes she would get the blue screen and it would just freeze.
My problem comes in by helping the witch. I was looking at it for her and the same problem happened. After 1/2 hour or so, it just kept restarting. I was screwing with a couple things (msconfig) (powermngmt) (Spybot) and it did not help. Then it restarted one last time, and now it won't start at all. I just get the hourglass and it stays there. It will not load (start) totally. It does the same in Safe Mode. Now the old hag thinks I did soemthing to totally fry it. Any ideas how to get the thing started so I can give it back to her and tell her to shove it? LOL

 

make sure the fans inside are spinning, could be overheating. also how much RAM does this puter have?

 

Fans are spinning and it has 128MN of ram.

 

128 MB of ram!

 

has there been any programs loaded recently, before all this happened?

 

nothing

 

Could be a hard drive problem

 

Thats what someone else told me.

 

what changes did you make in the MSCONFIG program?

 

could also have been a virus... i know the blaster virus for one causes your computer to shut down, but usualy only if you are connected to the internet. You could try formating the computer and if that dont solve it then i would be thinking it is the hdd aswell

 

I just unchecked "Quicktime" and another one that I can't remember. Afterwards the computer still was fine. It was just 20 minutes later that it started restarting and freezing.

 

I've never heard of a hard drive causing freezing or restarting problems, usually they just die or make a hell of a clicking sound, letting you know their gonna die.

I think this is a problem with the OS., and I'm not too familiar with windows ME, but if you can't get into safe mode or boot up normally, then re-installing the OS is probably your only choice. You may be able to download a program to check the integrity of the hard drive before installing on it again. sorry.

 

Power supply or overheating. I just changed a hsf on a 3 yr pc, socket 7 T-bird, and lowered the temp 10deg F., restarting could be hardware or software but this sounds like hardware, sorry can't be more scientific. Hard drive would just die or make alot of noise and die, shouldn't cause restarts. Could be memory also, d/l and test using memtest or similar app. If it's an older pc 3yrs or more change cmos battery, power supply and install fresh cpu hsf., battery $5, ps $35, HSF $5, saves alot of grief.