My PC likes to reboot by itself without warning??"

[singularity2006]

virus maybe? Maybe not.

Last time I had that happen, it was faulty hardware. Check your RAM and other devices. Unplug what you don't need and see what happens. And then try www.memtest86.com to test your RAM too.

[blendertrout]

Well, I suppose it could be a lot of things.. my first guess is rebooting from overheating... at least that what it was last time I had this same problem... check your fans. That's the best I got. Hope it helps.

[Zeio]

Not sure if it's directly related to your problem, but I had a similar issue with my computer rebooting randomly. Turns out it was a faulty power supply and some components such as my vid card were not receiving enough power. I bought a new antec 450w and I haven't had a problem since. I would also check a virus scan online that has turned up virii that norton etc has failed to catch.

www.trendmicro.com and try the online virus scanner

Good luck

-Zeio

[Sieb]

Virus?

[Emmortal1]

If you are running Windows XP since it no longer "bluescreens" it is set to reboot instantly instead when a major system crash occurs. Which could be a number of things going on such as memory, power supply, CPU overheating, software/driver issues.

Emmortal

[MistaT]

i had this problem but for my case it was overheating (my cpu fan was full of dust.. no clue how it happen..), check also your power supply as zeio said..

[Lunatique]

I can't imagine it being the powersupply, since it only started doing it recently, and I haven't added anything new to my setup. I used an online virus scanner(trendmicro) and my pc's clean. Did a Norton full system scan too, and it was fine. I have realtime protection turned on always, so I don't think it's a virus. Don't think it's an overheating issue either--I have an open box with a fan blowing directly into it(a real fan, not a computer vent fan). I usually have the room temperature at about 25 degrees(AC turned on), so it never gets too hot.

I turned off the automatically reboot thing in Win 2000, and it still reboots instantly.

I guess I'll try that memory test and see.

[johnnynightlife]

that has happened to me almost a dozen times since ive had duel monitors with my quadra fx2000. do u have 2 monitors? it only happpens when i drag from the second monitor back to the first, so people tell me it has to do with one monitor bring analog, and the other digital

[Zeio]

I know how you feel. I didn't think it could be the powersupply either, since I had been running fine for 6 months+ with no problems. I purchased an aluminum case+psu online for like 40$, and well, I got what I paid for with the psu. It may be something completely different with your computer though..

Have you added any new devices to your computer recently? If so, the added device could be sapping more power than your psu can offer. Perhaps you can download one of those system monitors to monitor your voltage etc. I use ASUSProbe as my mboard is asus and it alerts me if something is having problems (too bad i didnt have it installed when i ran into my rebooting problem)

Well, hope you find out your problem soon, I know its more than frustrating when your computer is disabled.

-Zeio

[Array]

WinXP actually generates an error log. That might be worth checking out. Most of the time it's pretty hard to read though....from what I remember at least.

[CgFX]

Originally posted by johnnynightlife
that has happened to me almost a dozen times since ive had duel monitors with my quadra fx2000. do u have 2 monitors? it only happpens when i drag from the second monitor back to the first, so people tell me it has to do with one monitor bring analog, and the other digital
Uh, that is totally bogus (DVI vs. VGA) as the scan-out portion of the GPU has nothing to do with anything upstream or the app/system/OS.

What mode are you in? Dualview or nView Span?

We have a bunch of these cards and have never seen a problem like this.

[rwijaya]

my best bet is the overheating problems, its really doesn't have any effects if u have a fan that blowing cool air inside if the pc producing more heat than the cool air. more powerfull 3dcard means its produce more heat. this is why they install a fan on the latest 3d card. do u have enough fan to blow hot air out from the case ? my setup is always .. one cool air fan blowing in, and 2 fan blowing hot air out. always runs fine ;)
so u might want to check the fan again.

my second bet is the powersupply . . beside of that . . nothing.

hope that helps.:)

[Cman]

When that happened to me, I replaced the power supply and it still happened.
I replaced the cpu fan and case fan and it still happened.
I did research and discovered the board I had had a problem with the FSB overheating. I received a replacement FSB fan from the manufacturer and it worked fine after that.
However, I decided to replace the motherboard, just to be safe. :thumbsup:

[Renzsu]

Although your Norton might be up to date, it might still be a good idea to run a special utility for recognising Blaster virusses.. the symptoms sure resemble the ones I've had when I was infected...

Try running these 3 tools, they helped solve my problems:

http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=vrt

[GregHess]

One common misconception about computers is that their static objects.

A problem can't occur if you didn't change/do anything right?

Wrong.

Just like car's, parts can break, go haywire, out of spec, explode (not kidding), fry, and generally misbehave with little or no user intervention.

Common causes?

1) Loose cables. (Gravity is a bitch)
2) Lack of case maintance (dust buildup)
3) Power supply on the fritz (Most people have generic/cheap powersupplies, and don't maintain them by routinely blowing dust out of them, so they start fluxin voltages)
4) Lack of software maintance (adaware, regcleaners, defragers, antivirus programs)
5) Dying bios battery resets specs to defaults, causing all sorts of problems.
6) Improper shutdowns corrupt system files.
7) Lack of UPS allows for voltage variations the psu can't compensate for.

First off...

1) Get a bios temp reading and report back to us. I don't care if you've got the computer in a farking wind tunnel. Get the bios temp and report back.

2) Since your case is already open...unplug the power cord, and get dust blowing. Get a nice can of compressed air, and make sure there isn't dust on a single thing. Including blowing out the psu, and making sure to blow air through all the heatsinks in the computer.

Open cases tend to pick up dust at a much higher rate then closed ones, so its important to do this frequently.

3) Check all the cables inside the case. Make sure all are firmly attached to both the mainboard, and the device their attached to. Check power cables as well. Check to make sure the ram is firmly seated in the motherboard (it can come loose). Check each peripheral card (video/pci) to make sure its seated fully in its slot.

4) Run the mcaffe stinger program. Even if you've run 3 or 4 other scanners...it doesn't matter. Its quick, its cheap, and it marks something off the troubleshooting list. Failure to follow a simple recommendation or step can add hours/days/weeks to a troubleshooting effort.

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

3) Once 2 is complete, and you've verified that there is no chance of any virus on the system...run memtest86.

http://www.memtest86.com

I know its already been mentioned, but you haven't responding with the results yet. Run 2-3 passes and report. A single error could indicate a bad ram setting in the bios, multiple errors usually point to bad or damaged ram. (Ram can be damaged by a .1 to .2 voltage variation).

4) After 4's done....Take out your network cable, boot to the Windows XP disk, and run a repair and choose all options.

5) Boot into XP and see if the reboot occurs. If it does, boot into safemode, see if it occurs.

If the computer seems to be working...hook the network cable back up.

For fun, download ad-aware...

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/

And update it to its latest reference file (click update when u first run the app) and let it scan your drive.

If it finds a whole crapload of stuff, you need to step up your maintaince of your machine.

[Lunatique]

Last night it just froze, and never booted up again. Not even a boot screen. The monitor didn't even get switched on(no signal sync). I've brought it in to work to have our I guy look at it. Not sure if he could find out what the problem is though.

[MattClary]

Let us know what you find.

[Lunatique]

Ok, out IT guy did this weird trick where he pulled out the RAM, and took an eraser to it and rubbed it against the copper contacts. And it fixed the problem. He said some Chinese guy at a cafe taught him the trick.

Anyway, he then installed Norton System Works on my PC, but now whenever I use Explorer to navigate to my hard drives, it lags hardcore. It takes about 10 seconds for Explorer to access any of the harddrives, and while it's "searching" or whatever, the graphics for the folders just disappears during that time. What the hell could that be? We thought it might be Norton System Works causing it, but after uninstalling them, it's still the same. He says Service Pack 4 might be doing it, but it was fine at home, and only started doing it after I brought it in to work.

[RenderStream]

I would either suggest its BAD RAM or it could be some sort of conflicting drivers. Try running MEMTEST-86 .

[RenderStream]

"Last night it just froze, and never booted up again. Not even a boot screen."

this is a sign of overheating/something got fried. Or it could be that your PSU failed.

Had you been overclocking?

[Lunatique]

No, I haven't overclocked for at least a year. Some suggested that there's probably a bad sector in one of my harddrives that causes the rebooting. Which sounds about right to me, since checkdisk warned me about one of my drives. I still don't know why it's accessing my harddrives so slowly though.

I ran memtest86 before I went to sleep. When I woke up, it was still going, but no errors. So I just stopped it(I thing 9 hours is plenty enough for the test, no?).

The pc's been blown/dusted, and cables checked.

the shutdown temperature was around 70 degrees, the system temp 37, and the cpu temp was around 30.

I use adaware often.

Stinger didn't pick anything up.

I did the repair, and Explorer is still "seeking" the harddrives.

[bigbad]

I have the same problem even with my new drive.
My old was a little wrong then one day it wouldnt even start up.


Make a backup as fast as you can before anything more goes wrong. Very important.

[Lunatique]

Heh, it turned out that one of my drive's partitions has mysterious become "unformatted," and all of its contents disappeared. Once I formatted it, the "seeking" of Explorer was gone.

I still have to find a way to fix the rebooting problem though.

[RenderStream]

Yeah, 9hrs straight is plenty for the memtest, mine found errors through the first run (10-20mins).

Im not sure what the shutdown temperature is, so many you could explain it.

Anyways, my suggestion would be to try to take out anything unneccessary (ie, pci cards, agp card, etc) Just run your computer with a CPU. mobo, PSU, hdd, and ram (and if you dont have one integrated, plug a vid card in).

Once i had some problems because of a broken 56k modem that was collecting dust, and never used. So just make sure you take out anything inside that you no longer use.

[GregHess]

Lunatique,

Does your system ever hang for a bit at the intial boot screen? (Where its detecting IDE devices).

Sometimes drive problems/errors can be caused by loose or damaged cables. It just takes a .1 mm nick in a IDE cable to introduce drive errors.

Do you have any spare drive cables you can try?

Thanks for trying the suggestions...sorry they didn't find an easy solution, but its still important to go through them all.

From my experience it sounds like you could have a psu on the fritz.

Any stats on the psu? (Age, wattage, type).

You also might want to run some drive diagnostics on the hd (in dos) to make sure its not giving any SMART errors.

What's your harddrive model/type?

[Lunatique]

I have a 300 watt psu, and since I've moved to Malaysia, I stopped using a UPS--as my last one didn't seem to do anything for my system. The PSU is about 2 years old, used about 24/7.

I have two 40 Gig IDE's, one 80 Gig IDE, and one 200 Gig IDE. The 200 GIg is a Western Digital, the test are Matrox I think.

There doesn't seem to be hanging at the IDE detection stage. I don' t have any spare cables. I'll see if I can scrounge some.

[GregHess]

Whats the last piece of hardware you added?

To test to see if your psu is on the fritz (or overloading), disconnect all periphals except for the one you need to boot.

Aka only connect the hd that the system is connected to, and disconnect all floppy and cdrom type drives (including the power connectors).

Sounds silly, but try it just the same.

If your problem disappears, you may need to invest 50-70 dollars into a newer/nicer power supply to handle the increased load on your system.

[Emmortal1]

What a lot of people don't realize either is that the vast majority of Power Supplies do not run at their so called stated wattage. If you invest a little bit more into it you can pick up a certified Power Supply that runs at the specified wattage. I always go for these as I have mission critical data on my system and the last thing I need is for a cheap PS to be causing me problems. Anyway, if you do end up replacing it, spend the extra money and get a certified PS, it will be worth it. Good luck,

Emmortal

[GregHess]

A good example of a readily available psu (thats high quality with a warranty) is the Antec Truepower series.

They're available at best buy, fry's, comp usa, and a variety of other computer stores.

But like I said, test first, buy later :).

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