Well, after thinking that the reason my install was not working was the hdd and buying a new one, i have the same problem.

im trying to install either kubuntu or fedora and both keep rebooting for no apparent reason. i thought it was my other hdd that was dead, but it still does the same thing... my ram seems to be ok at post, dont see any obvious problem.

does anyone ever experience this before?

thanks!

currently doing memtest86 from kubuntu cd, ill post results

well, computer resseted again, so i guess its one of the ram bars!

yup well no success, got up to stating the actual installation of packages when it rebooting on me again after only using 1 256M working memory bar... does anyone have an idea of what this *could* be?

thanks!

Well another update, i have a feeling that the memory bus is gone. i foudn an old pentium1 compaq pc i had collecting dust and stuck all 3 mem bars in it and it pretty much seem to work! only thing is now that i try to install linux i get a DWARF2 error, im supossing it because the previous install on the other box ended prematurely that it doesnt recognise it properly?

anyhow, what are your tough on this? can the mem bus be tested on the other box? thanks!

at what point (when) exactly the reboot-thing happens?

ramdomly, thats why i cant pin point the problem...

but now im trying on another box, i again i get the drawf2 message while trying to test the disc. im going to reburn it again and see what it gives then

well dvd is fine, so i now have no clue whatsoever

randomly in the installation process... humm.. it could be an overheating problem. check it.

This certainly sounds like a hardware problem.
What is that last thing that was working on this hardware?
Will it boot up and run from a live CD?
Have you cleaned it?--including disconnecting and inspecting all connectors?

Last thing that was working on this box is Mandrake about 1yr ago until the hdd crashed, now i got a brand new one. i have checked all connections, everything seems fine. Have not tried a live-cd

Get a live CD--eg Knoppix
Get a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD---has lots of diagnositic utilities
Don't rule out a bad power supply. You might try setting up a way of monitoring various supply voltages while you try things.

thanks pixellany, the only thing i havent checked was the cpu, i just took it out. seems like there some kind of glue or something that melted. ill post a pic in a second, u tell me what u think

here's what it look's like;
http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s...yde/img003.jpg

Thats no glue, it's thermal paste. It's needed so the heat gets transfered to the cooler. Does your system worked with some other OS recently (that is, without resets)? It's possible your mainboard has bad capacitors. One of the symptoms is random resets, but more typically the system doesn't boot properly from time to time (with intervall getting smaller). Do you experience problems at boot time (BIOS not posting)? Did other devices take damage on this machine (USB stick, graphic card)?

Are the capacitors bulged? You can post a pic if you don't know what you are looking for, preferably of the bigger ones near CPU and not from top but with some angle (to see bulging better).