9750 Endless Reboot

The unit is a Sager NP 9750 purchased 18 months ago at XoticPC.com. It is configured with an AMD X2 4200 64-bit CPU, 2x512MB SODIMM memory, 7800 GTX video card, 80GB 5400rpm SATA HDD, 1 CDRW/DVD optical drive, WinXP Home, Universal Internal WiFi. Two problems are plaguing this unit, one ongoing for several months, and one just occurring.

Problem 1. The unit takes from 7-9 minutes to shut down. Going through the usual process of clicking through Start>Shut Down shows no apparent problems other than how long it takes the system to actually turn off. What would cause it to be so slow to shut down?

Problem 2. This problem is more serious because the computer is not useable, and thus Problem 1 can't be dealt with until this one is. The unit is caught in some kind of reboot do-loop. I start up the computer per normal, it gets to the desktop and appears to be loading okay, then suddenly shuts off and reboots. This goes on indefinitely. I have to manually power off the unit to shut it down. What can I do to return to normal?

Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

 

wow could be a number of things.. one could be heat related, another could be a issue with windows itself.. among other things.. have you tried booting to safe mode to see if it will stay on the desktop? hold the f8 key while going to windows.. see if this can at least get you to the safe mode screen.... imo i would try that first...

have you called xoticpc.. they seem pretty willing to help i would also try calling them

 

Thanks for the reply and suggestions, zfactor. I wanted to post for information before contacting Justin because that computer is my home unit and I can't access it during work hours, in case he has some specific questions about it. I'll try your suggestion about safe booting to see if that works. If not, then I'll contact Justin.

 

Yup, zfactor is right.
1. Overheat / Clogged Heatsink / Worn-out Fan
2. OS / Software / Malware

 

With the slight exception of possible hard drive failure, this doesnt really sound like it could be hardware related, at least, not to the point of permanent damage. As stated above, I would open the notebook out and do a thorough cleaning, blowing out all fans and heat sinks with compressed air, ESPECIALLY if you've never done it before. Laptops, especially performance ones, are a lot more prone to overheating due to dust buildup then desktops due to their low profile (you prolly could have guessed that).

My guess, however, is that this is software related in some way. Both problems.

worst comes to worst, if you can afford to lose whatever data is on the laptop, wipe your drive and re-install your OS. You may find that a clean install may solve your problems.

 

He can do a fresh install without formatting his drive.
So let's say hardware has no issues (overheat, damaged components).
1. Use WinPE or similar kind of CD to boot up your notebook.
2. Use Total Commander or File Management Utility
3. Delete Windows folder, Rename Document & Settings to OLDDOC
4. Delete files on the ROOT directory.
5. Insert your Windows XP/Vista CD and boot up with it.
6. Install (Do not select FORMAT or QUICK FORMAT)

That's it.

 

I had a similar problem when I got my Sager 9260. I had to reinstall the OS three times due to odd crash issues. My first install was fine until I loaded some MS updates (two huge batches) automatically. When I rebooted as it recommended it went into a constant loop of shut-down-restart loop. I couldn't access safe mode, and a system restore rollback did no good. I know my OS disc was good because I had it on my old system. The other two times were driver issues (touchpad, and then bluetooth). Everything works okay now except I expected Core2Duo 2.66GHz (E6700) to be significantly faster than my old 1.8GHz (single core), it isn't.

 

Thanks for all the good advice about reinstalling the OS. Tonight I have attempted to do that, but the system will not read the OS CD. It just ignores the CD drive and goes into the same loop as before. I tried to enter BIOS by pressing F8 on a fresh restart, but it didn't take. So now what?

 

Are you sure F8 is the button to go into BIOS mode?
Usually it's DEL, or F2, or F10, or F12 depending by manufacturer.

Try those buttons and see if you can make your CD drive to have higher priority over your hard drive. Then try to boot your system with your OS CD.

 

f8 is for safe mode in windows not to enter the bios.. i believe it is f2 ti enter the bios..

 

Okay, ,yes, I got F8>safe mode and F2>bios mixed up. When I did get into BIOS and set it to read the CD drive first so I could try to reinstall WinXP from there. it seemed to go fine until time to reboot, at which point everything went back to as before--the loop again. I tried it three time with same result. It appears the system is not stable enough to get the OS from the CD. There is nothing wrong with the CD/DVD drive itself.

 

Next time into Safe Mode, set you machine NOT to reboot with the startup error. Am not running Windows (I'm using Linux) on my machine and can't remember offhand where you change that setting but suspect it's probably in System preferences. Once the rebooting loop is stopped, you should be able to reinstall Windows.

 

Thanks, bmwrob! I believe I saw that setting when in Safe Mode last night. Will return there tonight to see if your suggestion can be done.

 

About CD not being detected as a bootable disc, that doesn't make sense thou.

Do you have another XP/Vista CD to use with? Or perhaps spare optical drive internal or external?

If you did change boot order to CD first, HDD last, then it should work not ignore it.

 

Another thing you could try while in safe mode is to run Scandisk over the system drive. It will not run right away because it needs exclusive rights to the HDD, so it will prompt and say it will run after it is restarted. Scandisk will not only run over the OS and registry, but it will scan the HDD for bad sectors and either recover them or mark them as bad so they aren't written to again.

What exactly happens when the computer restarts? Are there any messages? How far does it go before it restarts? Is it the same spot that it restarts at every time? I just like to get as much information as I can so the advice I give is more precise and focuses on the problem.

 

Envision -- Either of two things happens when the computer restarts on its own. And it's always in the same place. The more common occurrence is while the Windows desktop is loading, the screen goes black and then the system goes into reboot and the Windows user sign-on screen appears. I sign on as usual and the desktop boots up, but before it is finished loading the restart cycle begins again. The next most common occurrence is essentially the same except from the desktop instead of going black a DOS-like error screen comes up saying that Windows has shut down to prevent damage. It gives some instructions about whether this is the first occurrence or has happened before, and about going into safe mode and checking BIOS. From here I have to manually shut off the computer. When restarting it, the reboot proceeds until the desktop is loading, then it crashes again.

I was able to get into BIOS and set the CD drive as the first drive in order to access the XP recovery disk. But this has not worked.

 

Here are some stop error screen messages that appear when booting up and then when trying to reinstall XP Home.

When booting up (this occurs as the desktop is loading):

I have attempted to reinstall WinXP Home from the CD provided by the computer builder. The process was proceeding from CD when at the point of accepting the EULA another stop message screen appears:

We are beyond my level of experience at this point. Any direction or assistance you can provide is much appreciated in advance.

 

According to MS . . .

If this is accurate, you may have a problem with RAM. I only looked into the first error message because I've seen it before - on my own machine.

I didn't reread this thread; if you haven't already, you might try pulling out sticks of RAM one at a time to see if you can fix the problem simply. If that doesn't work, try, one at a time, switching sticks to different slots.

 

Oh rob, sorry to hear your issues. I just recently (2 months) rebuilt my XP using a new 160Gb HDD, my 7k100 HDD kept erroring out and no scan disk repair and even a fresh XP rebuild would work. I had BSODs on the boot up and all and yes, it did loop as well.

If the mem stick swap testing is OK then replace the boot HDD with another spare HDD if you have one lying around and build your XP. If it builds OK then you know it's a HDD otherwise, it's more than likely a mobo issue and it's Sager time...

Unfortunately, unlike DELL, Sager has no diagnostic utilities that I am aware of. Don't forget memtest as well mate...

 

well.... i had a small lcd issue.. i can not at all say for sure it was the cpu that cause it but... i picked up a t7700 on saturday. i sold my friend my t7500 and we installed it in his toshiba x205. all his system did at first was constant re-boot. we removed it then re-seated it.. now it will boot but 3-4 times he has had a half black screen.. doesnt make any sense to me but from seeing this i could say it could even be the cpu...this is most likely something you will need to send it in for so it can be diagnosed if you dont think you can go much further with it..