Our computer repeatedly restarts, but instead of turning back on and booting up, it gives long beeps. To turn it off, we have to unplug it. The monitor displays the " Self test. Check your PC and Signal CABLE. Monitor is working." message like it does when only the monitor is on.

After leaving the computer alone overnight, it works again and will boot up. We first started getting this problem in early May, and then it would be fine for at least a week, but now we have two hours at the most before it shuts down.

When it first started, we would be glad to see the BSOD, as it would mean that we just needed to turn it off again and it would be fine, but that hasn't been happening lately.

It would be nice to know if there is some WAY to fix it, or if we need to give up all hope and get rid of it. It is a Microsoft Windows XP Media Center edition 2005. We have had it since 2006. We don't know very much about it, but if you need any info other than the above I can try and track it down. We have tried to wipe the hard drive, but the computer always gives us issues before we can do it. We have also tried to do a system restore, but the same thing happens. Running the disk defragmenter didn't help, and it turned off before it could complete the disk clean up.There are 3 things you can check that won't cost a dime...always a good idea on an older machine.

Power.
Borrow a known good PSU from a friend and swap it in there overnite...if it runs normal with no BSOD's you've found your culprit.

Memory
DLoad and run MemTest...follow the guide for creating a bootable CD...any errors at all means you have a bad STIK of RAM.
Let it run min. 2 hours.

Hard Drive
DLoad and again follow the guide to create a bootable CD with their diagnostics...this will tell you if it's the HDD

Best of luck.

PS When's the last time you did any housekeeping on this machine inside the case ? ?
Post back for guidelines...Quote from: illiana on July 13, 2010, 06:13:11 PM

...After leaving the computer alone overnight, it works again and will boot up. We first started getting this problem in early May, and then it would be fine for at least a week, but now we have two hours at the most before it shuts down...

PS When's the last time you did any housekeeping on this machine inside the case ? ?
Post back for guidelines...

but the computer started being difficult.

Will swapping a PSU from a Windows 98 work? If so, how do you do it?