PC rebooting issue

[brucekn]

I have a PC that I built some years ago and am giving it to my grandson for college. It has been working fine as a 3rd PC in our home until this past weekend. (specs below) It will POST and present the BIOS and RAID screens, then reboot in an endless cycle. After the first time I get the WinXP text screen that gives me options of starting normally or going to various safe Modes, but whichever is selected it still reboots.

I have tried resetting BIOS, changing RAM, changing the boot HD to a non-RAID (and even deleting the RAID array) and reinstalling XP. All I have left is the PSU, video card (seems an unlikely component), and the motherboard.

The wierd thing is, the reboot only occurs when I have my USB mouse plugged in. If I boot with no mouse, no problems,a nd I can then install the USB mouse and the system finds it OK. Or I can boot with a PS2 mouse OK. I have tried 4 USB mice with no solution.

With the USB mouse at boot time, if I try to boot to the XP CD I get the dreaded 0X0000007E stop code error. Looking on the web, this appears to be a hardware or driver issue.

Any ideas? I did a serach on "reboot" but didn't see thios particular issue. Also noted that some apps do not work properly now ( on original XP instanace).

A8NSLI 32 delux, Athlon 64 3700+, 2 X1GB RAM, NV 7600GT video card, 1 X RAID0 array, 1 X HD (non-RAID), all SATA. WinXP SP3.

Thanks, Bruce.

 

[Kraynor]

Is Legacy USB Support (or similar) enabled in the BIOS? If it is, try disabling it. If not, enable it. Some USB devices argue with BIOS when it's being initialised, and some others attempt to force initialisation on power up.

 

[mike99]

What PSU, make/model. Sounds like PSU or motherboard. Easy test is to attach a known good PSU to the PC(no need to actually fit the PSU in the case). If no change, suspect faulty motherboard. Have you checked motherboard for bulging/leaking capacitors?

Mike.