KClaisse

I guess this is the best place to post this, so here's the problem. My computer is randomly restarting. Its only happened twice but that is within the last 2 hours. Its not a normal restart either, the screens shut off, and out of the speakers comes this high-pitched chirp. It almost sounds like an electrical serge, but that's not possible because its plugged into a 1500VA system (who's self test comes back fine). I've got it plugged straight into the wall for now just to be sure. The only recent change I've made to the system is I removed 2GB (of 4Gb total) of ram yesterday, but I made sure the overclock was just fine by running prime95 for a few hours. In my experience, ram problems usually result in lockups, not complete power losses. I'm hoping this isn't a power supply issue because there's really no way for me to test it. Specs of the PC are the sig rig below, OS is Windows XP SP3. Its got all the latest updates, virus scan is installed and working, it has a firewall installed (ESET Smart Security) and I also have a pretty nice firewall/router running smoothwall with realtime virus scanning on all HTTP traffic. I don't think this is a virus/malware. I've scanned with ESET, ad-aware, and spybot and all the last two found were some tracking cookies, nothing serious. I should also add, that when the system shuts off and then back on, none of the appliances around me loose power.

I would greatly appreciate any help with this problem.

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RoddimusPrime

I have heard of SP3 causing such problems, esp. in conjunction with other programs.

Try testing the RAM. Download Memtest 86 and creating a bootable disc. It should tell you whether you have bad RAM or not. You could also have a bad slot for the RAM, but again run the Memtest 86 and see what slots it recognizes and tests.

Yeah, the PSU could do that if it is dieing, but without either a spare PSU or a Multimeter to test the voltage you will not know for sure... unless your computer permanently dies

ACHILEE5

What was running when it crashed?

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valtopps

test your psu.

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KClaisse

I've got a memtest disket around here somewhere, i'll give it a go today. Right now I've reset all my overclocks to see if that fixes. It has happened three times now while the computer was running, the last being slightly different, the computer froze this time.

I didn't know testing a psu would be as simple as a voltage check. I have a digital multimeter that I could test that with.

EDIT: This time it bsoded:

MACHINE_CHECK_FAILURE
0x0000009C

Hardware failure. Only thing I don't have a temperature monitor on is my ram, so I opened up the case and I found that I forgot to put my ram coolers back on when I removed the 2 sticks. X( Little mistake, big problems. So far no problems. Just played eve for a couple hours which uses all the RAM it can get. I'll run memtes86 now for good measure.

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killbot

Hi there ,

I seem to be having a similar issue ,
I have xp (x86) spac3 , and I am getting random reboots ,

no blue screen , no memory dump nothing ????

I have done 5 re installs of xp ,
including updating from spac2 install disc via windows website , and the latest I have slipstremed spac3 to my install disc .

I have tried with all the latest drivers for video , lan , chipset and raid .
and also leaving the drivers that came with the mobo and video card .

all with the same result random reboots .

I have also tried both IDE and sata disks as well with the same result .

all installations have been a stock everything and reboots have happened post install , at stock and overclocked settings

the pc ran for weeks no problems and I am unsure when this problem started compared to when spac3 was installed origionaly .

the beef I have here is I have Vista64 ultimate sp1 which runs fine no problem with no reboots , so it isn't a hardware problem

sundogdayze

Next time you get a random reboot, check the event viewer and post the errors (if any). This might help narrow down where the issue is coming from.

killbot

there are no errors in the event viewer at all , this is the I have an error about the jraid , but I get that in my vista copy too ,I am trying to investigate this but I don't think this is the cause . .
there is no BSOD or event error just a reboot ,
I would say it was a mobo /cpu problem
BUT it is fine with the vista 64

very fustrating

Pir

I had the same problem as you are experiencing. The cause of it all was the gpu driver. My system restarted randomly, sometimes 8 to 10 times in a row.
To solve this is pretty simple. When passing the initial bios screen hit F8 to enter safe mode menu.
In there choose "do not restart when error occurs" or something simular (my os is in dutch so i don't know exactly how it is written in english)

Restart and the repeating reboots should be gone.

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killbot

how did you find out it was your GPU causing the reboots ?

i would like to find why the reboots are happening rather than just stopping the m/c actually reastarting .

but thanks for the info