Restart Cycle

[markbru]

My system runs fine except for performing an OS restart. If I try to restart the machine, it will shutdown and power back up like it should, but about 5 seconds into the new startup, it shuts down again and just goes through a continuous on/off cycle. However, if I shut the machine down and wait for about a minute or two before powering back up, it boots just fine. I'm thinking it is probably a capacitor problem that requires some charge to dissipate before the thing will boot correctly.

Does anybody know what this might be and how to go about solving the problem?

The system has a Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard with 4x1GB RAM, 5 SATA drives, a Q6600 Core 2 Quad processor, and a GeForce 8600 GT video card.

 

[hunter315]

What power supply do you have? I had one that was going bad that was behaving similarly.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

Most restart loops are caused by RAM issues. I wouldn't be surprised if that was causing your problem since you're running 4 sticks of RAM. Do all 4 sticks have the exact same specs (speed/timings/voltage)? Have you manually set the RAM speed/timings/voltage to the manufacturer's specs in the BIOS? Have you run Memtest86+ overnight to test for RAM errors? That's the first place I'd start.

I had a similar problem with a Gigabyte motherboard and it ended up being a faulty stick of RAM.

 

[markbru]

I've already tried a different power supply and that wasn't the problem. I've also run Memtest86+ overnight, but that was a long time ago. I think I'll try taking out 3 sticks and just running with 1GB and see if the problem goes away by doing that, but I don't think it is a memory problem.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

I wouldn't be so quick to rule out the RAM as the problem. You didn't answer whether you manually set the RAM settings in the BIOS. Running 4 sticks of RAM is harder on the motherboard and sometimes requires both the RAM and northbridge voltages to be bumped up a bit for stability.

I also ran Memtest86+ when I first set up my computer and it didn't show any errors. I then started having problems like yours and ran Memtest86+ again. It ran fine for about 5 passes and then started throwing errors on one of the sticks of RAM. I replaced the RAM with some low voltage RAM and haven't had any problems since.

 

[markbru]

I have configured the RAM settings in the BIOS manually according to the manufacturer settings (Corsair), and I've also run with the BIOS defaults or AUTO settings. It does the same thing no matter what. MemTest for the short bit that I've run it doesn't report any errors.

 

[Niklas_13]

Try the mobo forums i seen this problem posted in there i think bilbat has helped with this on a few systems, Something to do with the usb storage something like that

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/262226-30-disk-restarts-memory-testing

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261902-30-gigabyte-tale

hope this helps