Pentium D restarting

**angels355** · 10-27-2011, 05:01 AM

I have a nice Dell Dimension E510, runs Pentium D's, chipset Intel i945P/G. I received it stripped down and suspected of malfunctions of some sort. Installed an Enermax 550 PSU, and 2 x 256 mb = 512 mb of DDR2 ram, ram tested fine. Installed Pentium D 2.8 ghz, 800 mhz FSB, and an amazing 4 mb of L2 cache. It used to run OK on Linux, but after a while it would begin to restart for no reason after having booted all the way up. Seems to have gotten worse, now it won't even start to boot. The HDD tested fine, put in a different HDD and same results. Friend said he thought it was a bad PSU, I was doubtful because it was a stout Enermax 550 that runs fine in other computers. Put that back in my P4, bought a new Antec 450 watt continuous PSU. It runs fine in the BIOS, however the only thing it will boot into now is memtest. The second it starts feeling a load while booting from the hdd or DVD rom drive in 32 bit DSL Linux, Ubuntu 7.10 very light linux, LinuxMint 7, LinuxMint 11, Win 7 safe mode, or 64 bit LinuxMint 10, it immediately restarts. From the DVD rom drive, LinuxMint 10 64 bit, and LinuxMint 11 32 bit, after it just starts booting it stops progressing in the boot. The light weight Ubuntu 32 bit 7.10 cd live disk boots to the menu (like the others) then when I press enter to boot 7.10 the DVD drive really spins fast as it starts to boot up, then the computer resets.

Don't have a temperature reading. All the capacitors look good, that is nothing deformed. Any suggestions?

**Paxx** · 10-27-2011, 08:55 AM

Try pulling the motherboard battery for 10 minutes, re-inserting battery, then boot up.

**angels355** · 10-27-2011, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by Paxx

Try pulling the motherboard battery for 10 minutes, re-inserting battery, then boot up.

Did that before, I'll try it again.

**angels355** · 10-27-2011, 01:31 PM

After 10 minute battery cmos reset, it's still restarting. For Win 7 safe mode, it scrolls down the list of items and drivers booting, but then when it hits the point where it has to do real work the computer resets. Should I try another processor?

**angels355** · 10-27-2011, 03:13 PM

Wonder if there is something wrong with the motherboard. I'm going to try out a couple more of my computers that need TLC.

**Paxx** · 10-28-2011, 09:16 AM

Probably the motherboard. I had one with similar issues a few years ago. It kinda just "went" as you describe. Removing the battery every once in awhile got it to run as normal until next reboot, which required battery removal again, until it finally just quit.

Swapping parts in and out will tell the tale.

**angels355** · 10-28-2011, 04:26 PM

Originally Posted by Paxx

Probably the motherboard. I had one with similar issues a few years ago. It kinda just "went" as you describe. Removing the battery every once in awhile got it to run as normal until next reboot, which required battery removal again, until it finally just quit.

Swapping parts in and out will tell the tale.

Little discouraged about that one. Have another that is just plane dead. Last night I did however save a Dimension 8400 clamshell case P4 w/ HT. The bios were so advanced similar to the first Dell that i checked the chipset to make sure it was not Pentium D capable. It's an i925X/XE chipset, can only run P4's and Extreme Panic P4's. This one has a 3.2 ghz P4 w/ HT. Have another advanced P4 to start up, I'll check it's chipset also, I think I have a faster P4 in it, 3.4 or 3.6 hopefully. Then I have a DFI 939 socket overclockable with an AMD4000+ processor, would like to find an FX60 processor w/ 2 cores. Also have another Athlon 2800 that I might be able to rescue. I have a plain vanilla new Intel mobo, DG31PR, which I don't think is overclockable. There are some processors however that are capable of self turbo boosting etc, is the Q9550 or Q9650 like that? I was thinking of maybe just the Q6600 because the mobo is not not very advanced. What do you think? It is compatible with 64 different processors, one 16x PCI-E video card slot, four SATA drive slots, two IDE slots. Can run up to the 64 bit Core 2 Duo series Quad Core Q9650 processor.

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support...pboards/dg31pr

http://www.intel.com/support/motherb.../CS-029381.htm

http://processormatch.intel.com/Comp...ardname=dg31pr