Build Advice New build keeps restarting itself when loading Windows.

I recently purchased a new motherboard, CPU and RAM and am trying to put it together with some spare old parts that I have lying around. The problem I am having is that it seems to restart itself as soon as it starts loading Windows. Strangely, it has successfully booted into Windows once out of 50+ attempts, and it ran fine for a few hours until the next time I switched it off and on again.

The parts I am using are as follows:
- MSI 770-C45 motherboard
- AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition processor
- 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 DHX memory
- Leadtek WinFast PX7800GT 256MB PCI-E graphics card
- Jeantech PUFP-405 405W ATX PSU
- Seagate U Series 5 20GB IDE hard drive (with Windows XP on) =P

So far I have tested the HDD, PSU and graphics card on my other PC, and they are all working fine. I have also tried another PSU (also 400W) and HDD (500GB SATA with Vista) on this new build, and still getting the same problem. I have also tried using both sticks of memory individually.

Not sure where to go from here. I haven't really played with the BIOS settings at all. I have restored the defaults and thats about it.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

Might be a daft question - but have you reinstalled windows, or just stuck a hard drive with a pre-installed copy on there? If you haven't - reinstall, new system = new drivers etc...

RwD

 

Sorry, I forgot to mention that the HDD I am using has Windows pre-installed on it.

I have tried re-installing Windows XP SP2 but it always hangs while loading the files from the disc. I have noticed that it seems to hang at different places though.

 

Any chance you can burn off a live cd to test the componants?

RwD

 

Not sure if you have given it much thought, but i've had issues like this before with dodgy sectors on your RAM causing very similar problems, get a session of memtest running to double check that nothings gone wrong.

Its one of the most common problems i've run into along my years of building, and since memory all comes with a lifetime warranty (one way or another) its the least problematic thing to have fail in a system.

Give it a try and let us know how it gets on.

 

two points of interests! one you probably need a higher wattage PSU new CPU + MEM more power! try at least a 550 W and do a MEM test! you can download it from microsoft or anywhere you wish just google it! (MEMTEST)

 

I dont think power is it. A 7800gt isn't very demanding

 

Thanks for all the suggestions

I made a Ubuntu live cd, which also had memtest on it.

I tried running memtest on each stick individually. One kept freezing as soon as the test started. The other returned a lot of errors before eventually freezing up too.
I got Ubuntu up and running fine though (without installing).

Is this likely to be an issue with the memory or could it be an issue with my motherboard?
Is there any settings in the BIOS I could play with?

I got this RAM off eBay so no warranty for me! >.< looks like I will just have to get myself a couple new sticks and hope that sorts it.