I have a Dell Dimension 4400. Everytime I power the computer up, it shuts down when its almost to windows. It just keeps recycling.... turning on/off/on/off/on automatically. Would it be my PSU or Hard drive? OR ??

If Windows starts booting and then it restarts, it's probably a Windows problem. Try reformatting and seeing if you still have the problem.

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If that doesn't work and you have speakers, turn them on and then of whilst it loads up.
I don't know why it works but it generally works for me so try it and if it still doesn't work then UNPLUG EVERYTHING then leave for an hour or 2 then plug everything back in and try again.I you are really unlucky and it still doesn't work then I don't think I can help you so I would recommend getting a pro like Ash in again.

Wow........I'm unplugging everything right now.......wait a minute...........if I do that I can't continue to type this sarcastic reply. Anyway, I would go with what ash said on this one. In the worst case you may have to restore windows with the disk. I had to do that once when I moved my computer and powered it up with nothing plugged in....DUH. Needless to say when I did plug everything in it would not recognize my keyboard, mouse, etc.......until I reloaded windows.

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OK, so I'm retarded but my way always seemed to work for me so I just thought it might help.

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Is your Fan working in the back of the PC?
It might be possible its over heating?

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First!!!!!!!!!!!! Open the case
Second, Look at all the capacitors. Are they rusted on top? Are they bubbled up?

It is one of a few things, a) power supply, b) some bad RAM, c) Some bad software (drivers, virus'...) or d) a bad motherboard.

My questions/tests are to determine if it is d). Dell has had several bad runs of motherboard capacitors. There are plenty on the mobo, but if one is gone, you can get just that reaction.

Sadly, since it's a 4400, it will be way out of warranty, and you need to get a new motherboard to move everything over.

I agree with leethomas787 Sounds like your CPU is overheating causing your computer to start and restart.Check to see if the fan is working on the CPU.

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Overheating can cause a computer to start and restart? When mine overheats, it either freezes or it just temporarily pauses and sort of revives itself, but I guess if you have a problem with the fan then it's a different story.

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If it overheats it should just shut off not restart.

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not really, it would restart, but it would leave an overheat message in the bios logs. Also, typically, overheating allows one to get a lot farther than the OS logo screen. You can normally get logged into the OS (from a truly cold machine), but after that, you would start taxing the processor and it would be overheating enough to do a thermal shutdown/restart.

If the fan does not move enough air, it could cause some problems with overheating, but i still think it's a hardware issue, (that is if it's not a bad system file).

If the capicators all look good, i'd recommend attempting a good scandisk /f option. I've seen one hard drive lately that was so bad, that it had to be slaved to a known good drive, and then had scandisk/checkdisk run. Once the dirty drive was cleaned, it worked WONDERFULLY!

The one question that has not been asked/answered is: Do you see a blue screen error flash by when it's restarting? Or does the system go to black screen/reboot?

I also saw one motherboard recently that had 9 (count them 9) capacitors blown in a row of 12. It only takes 1 bad capacitor to cause this type of reboot problem.

Do you think you can try the following test? With the case open, start the machine. Watch the motherboard LED. When the system reboots, see if that led flashes (as in loses power). I doubt that will occur, as it holds power longer than the motherboard, however, if it does, the power supply is bad.

Have you tried unplugging all unnecessary devices? (CD/DVD, Floppy drives, unplugging USB hard drives...) Leave only keyboard, monitor, mouse and Hard drive attached. See if there is any difference in how long the system is left on.

More later.