Ok, I seriously need some help on this one... My PC has been acting funny since Friday morning when I smelled a strange odor coming from it... (come to find out later the motherboard had leaky capictors), so I left for work after I shutdown the PC and when I got back home I turned it back on.. only to have it reboot right before it started to load windows (every single time it rebooted)... so with the smell smelling like it was coming from my Power Supply Unit (PSU) I thought it was going bad, so I bought a new PSU and installed it and it still rebooted right before the WinXP loading screen (actually rebooted right after the safe mode/normal mode selection screen). Then I noticed the bulging/leaking capacitors on my motherboard, so I went out and exchanged the new PSU for a new motherboard... after that was installed it still rebooted a lot. So then I started to think it might just be one of my hard drives (HDD), so I disconnected all of them except the smallest one (NTFS so couldnt even format using DOS comands) and tried to format it to WinXP... that was no good because I couldnt get the PC to not reboot so I could format the HDD using the WinXP disc or even HDD utility discs... everytime it got to a point in getting ready to format the PC would reboot. Finally I had enough and unplugged everything.. only leaving 1 HDD, 1 DVD Burner, GF4 ti440 video card, one DIMM of RAM, modem, and I replaced the IDE ribbon to the HDD. I was able to format the small HDD with WinXP with this setup. After it booted into WinXP with no problems I started putting stuff back into the case... the other stick of RAM and another HDD. At this point it would boot into windows, but it would reboot still (but not as bad.. almost like it was semi-stable). I didnt have any USB stuff plugged in, but as soon as I plugged in my USB mouse it started rebooting before windows again. So I unplugged that and added another HDD to the fray... started rebooting before windows... I noticed that my CPU is a Athlon 2000+XP so it should run at or around 1.6GHz clock speed, but when I check it using the My Computer icon it says it is a 1.2GHz... and I didnt underclock it, so something is up. As I write this I only have these items hooked up... 2 sticks of RAM(1GB), the smallest newly-reformatted HDD (8GB), PS/2 mouse, ps/2 keyboard, dvd burner, monitor running through the GF4 ti4400 card, new motherboard, old PSU (nothing was wrong with it), and WinXP Pro and the PC still reboots whenever I do something that requires more work from the PC than just typing on the net. The only constants in this from beginning to end are: GF4 ti4400 video card, keyboard, dvd burner, one stick of ram, and the Processor.... everything else has either been removed or replaced (ie: motherboard, HDD ribbon) Think the CPU (processor) is getting bad? I am at a serious loss here... I have no clue what else it could be... EDITED IN: OK... I went to http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp and downloaded the program there to test RAM to make sure it wasnt the cause of the rebooting... needless to say the PC rebooted during the 6th test everytime... so I took out one RAM stick and tried the test again... still rebooted after the 6th test. So finally I went into the bios and disabled all onboard cache that I could find and only have the CPU cache enabled.. plus I changed the FSB from 133 to 100... I then ran the RAM test again... this time it didnt reboot. Does this help narrow it down? Since I changed the FSB to 100 it hasnt rebooted yet (of course it has only been about 20-25 minutes) Now does it sound like a processor problem? I really need some input on this.. it is killing me. Thanks, Pent

Oops... "needless to say the PC rebooted during the 6th test everytime... so I took out one RAM stick and tried the test again... still rebooted after the 6th test." the "after the 6th test." should be "during the 6th test."

have u checked the cpu temps

If its stable at 100 and unstable at 133, and that's a new mobo you're dealing with now, I'd say you have a memory problem. But the lower fsb will also put less stress on the cpu, so the cpu could be overheating. Try this program at both 100fsb and 133fsb while monitoring the cpu temp... http://www.geocities.com/btvillarin/Downloads/Toast.zip

Humm I don't know for sure , but my option is that your CPU overheated a bit to much or had some kind fo short as to damage it somehow, but its still working to a point. So when you put stress on it , it casuses errors and your system just reboots. Thats the only idea I can think of. T-boy