hi all,
i have a 3 year old medion pc with P4 2 gig chip.
a few weeks ago i left it downloading stuff,came back in and there was an error message on the screen saying that the hard disk has run out of space (the pc was locked).
restarted it and since then i only sometimes get a video signal,and when i do the pc resets itself before windows starts loading (i get the writing at the start with memory,type of system etc).
i tried it with a new 3d card,have removed all components eg memory and cards,one at a time with no difference.
i have tried different hard discs,inc. one with a fresh install of xp.someone suiggested removing everything inc. IDE cables,as he reckoned it would still get so far,have done this with no joy,just keeps resetting.
so suspect it may be the motherboard (maybe hard disk controller?),but i'm no expert at all.
any help much appreciated.
i can get a new mboard for about £30 for it,but would like to be more certain that this will fix it.
many thanks,
col

Hi rgvkid,

First, some clarification questions:

>How large is your harddrive, and have you actually run out of space or not?
>Does your system ALWAYS reboot, or only sometimes? Can you get into XP?
>Can you boot into the XP Safe Mode and run normally in Safe Mode?
>Can you boot into the BIOS screen? IF so, what is the reading on the hard drive?

>Can you see if your heatsink fan is running inside the case? Are all your case venting fans running?

Thanks...

hi ranchhand,
the hard disk was 120 gig,it actually had run out of space on that partition (C,the windows partition).
i cant get into the setup screen because every time it resets itself before i can get into setup.
so cant get into windows at all.
as i said,i have tried it with different hard drives and it does exactly the same,so suspect it is not the hard disk.
also the signal going to the monitor is only there 50% of the time,completely pot luck if i get a signal or not.
many thanks,
col

Okay, so far here's what we got; correct me if I am wrong on anything.

>You cannot boot into XP;
>You cannot boot into Safe Mode;
>You cannot boot into the BIOS screen;

>The reason for the above is that the computer auto-reboots before it reaches those screens, right? And it continues to auto-reboot ad-infinitum until you do a hard shutdown, right? Correct me if I am wrong.

*Okay, try to reset your BIOS back to factory settings, if you haven't already. Usually on modern boards there is a jumper for this (check your manual) or just pull the CMOS battery for 1/2 hour.

*If still no joy after that, try swapping the memory stick with another you know is good, even if you must borrow one. Size or speed isn't important, you just want to see if you can now boot into XP or BIOS. I know you mentioned "pulling the memory", but did you try different memory to test? Bad memory will do exactly what you are experiencing, sometimes without error messages.

*After that, pull your CPU and check that the thermal grease is normal; I have had units where it took several weeks, but the thermal grease ran down the side of the chip and was shorting out the contacts on the chip board itself. If you need help with this, post back and there are good tuts for this.

*Finally, the ambiguous Power Supply. If you don't have a tester, then you have to swap it out with one you know is good. Don't use an atx PS, but one for Pentium. If after all that you still have the same problem, I suspect the mainboard went south. There just isn't anything else left to test. I would try using KNoppix to boot from the CD, but if the unit reboots before reaching the CD drive, that won't work.

Post back with what you find out, I am going to contiinue thinking about this.

I agree with ranchhand. You seems to have a hardware problem, probably on your motherboard, but try to check your power supply and your memory sticks. Better remove all of them and restart with the minimum (first memory bank only) and see what happens.
HD controller seems to have nothing to do on this, because symptoms are quite different.

Chris

many thanks folks,
am away with work till the weekend but will certainly give it a go then.
when it first went wonky,i tried it with removing one item at a time eg network card,memory etc,. but i havent tried more memory in it.
i currently have 2 sticks of memory in it,but the pc did the same with them both (aND none).
resetting the motherboard sounds a good one.
cheers,
col