If your computer continuously restarts while running, or if you see the flash of a blue screen before it reboot, then Windows is in a state where the only way it can attempt to fix itself is through rebooting. While this will work with the occasional system crash, it will not fix the issue if there is a drastic hardware or software problem. Instead, your machine will seem to be caught in a loop of starting up, crashing and rebooting. The key to solving this type of problem is capturing the crash message that is flashing on the screen.
Prevent Windows From Rebooting
You can stop Windows from rebooting after a crash by doing the following:
- Right-click My Computer
- Select properties
- Select the Advanced Tab
- Under Start-up and Recovery, uncheck the Automatic Restart box and then click OK.
- Reboot the computer
Now when your computer crashes, you should see the confusing Blue Screen of Death along with an error code. You can search Microsoft.com for the exact nature of that code and take measures to resolve it. Depending on the error, you might try rebooting into Safe Mode by tapping F8 while booting and running a System Restore to revert your computer back to a time when it was not crashing. Or you might run the error checking utility in Windows to scan your computer’s hard drive for issues. You might also run a popular program called Memtest86 to scan your computer’s RAM for errors that could be causing system stability issues.
The first step in this process is getting the blue screen to remain on the screen, and preventing the automatic restart is the way to do this. If you need more help in diagnosing your crashing computer please join our free computer forums.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
My desktop computer will not fully boot when I try to start it. A “clicking” sound is heard afterward the screen flashes and goes to the screen that indicates that windows did not start successfully. Then, when I select either of the identifed start methods (safe mode, etc.) it attempts to start but returns to the same “sorry that windows did not successfully start” screen. So far, I have been unable to interrupt the process in order to see the error message.
What else should I be doing to correct the problem? Thanks.
The clicking could indicate a dying hard drive. If you have a Windows disk, maybe try booting to it and run chkdsk -r from the recovery console. Chkdsk can sometime correct this issue, but if the drive is bad, you might ultimately need to replace it. Read more about the process here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058
If the hard drive is not dead, there are special keys that you can press when it starts that will open up a service test / diagonosis panel. It depends on the manufacture. If you computer is under warranty call them about it. If they are not helpful check out the support section of their site.
after flashing a new version of bios to my computer it now restarts immediately after the first windows screen shows, then flashes the blue screen of death, and then reboots. Bios looks normal, and I had made copies of 2 different versions of the bios before starting the procedure but did not copy the existing configuration. According to the manufacturer this should have been an option during the procedure along with some fail safes to make sure you really wanted to continue the procedure. Not the case as soon as i started, the process continued until my current problem without me doing anything. (dooohhh). Now te only computer that i have that has a 3.5 in. drive is dead and the bios can only be loaded through this method… as far as i can tell. The elusive blue screen was captured on my digital camera as it was much too quick to read, but no error message showed. Probably not really necessary as i’m pretty sure its a bios issue.