atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC

When last we looked in at our hero he had resolved one problem (Accessing the CD/DVD drive caused the system to reboot) only to find another one springing up (PC reboots all the time on its own).

So the PC reboots constantly (see earlier posting). I have changed the CD drive and removed roxio and installed nero. So now the drive works, but the PC continues to reboot at random intervals, usually when nothing is going on with it (average, every two or three hours).

Before changing the power supply or motherboard (which will have to wait for my return from vacation anyway) I tried an experiment.

I formatted a floppy with system files and booted the PC from the floppy. As the floppy is formatted with FAT it can't read the C or D drive (NTFS) or see the cdrom (no drivers) but it is booted to the A prompt.

And that's where it's been sitting for 30 hours. I popped out the diskette so in case it rebooted I'd be looking at XP. I'm not. It has not rebooted. It's a new worlds record.

So should I assume that it's not hardware, but a problem with the OS (Win XP SP2) or some program and give the whole damn thing an enema and start again?

Should I try deleting programs one at a time and then reinstalling them?

Anybody have any ideas?

I love my MAC but I've got to keep at least one Win machine running here.

I'm tempted to go buy a cheap new starter and just start reinstalling programs one at a time.

Any and all suggestions are welcome.


Sam

Buy a Mac!

.... oh wait... never mind

I have no real insight on this, only witty comments.

:banana:

Sam,

I feel you pain brother. I somehow managed to lock myself out of my machine last week. After trying password crackers and removers to no avail, I went and got another drive and did a reinstall on it and copied the data I needed off the old drive. Might be a way for you to go.

John

P.S. my scsi scanner has outlasted 3 generations of computers and is still going strong.

If it an older computer, Take a look at the Capacitors on the Motherboard. Some have poor quality ones, and all you have to do I replace them. I had to replace mine once, my computer was rebooting like yours.

Check out www.badcaps.com

Well as a CG who deals with this all the time, I would say you have a driver issue. Bad, corrupt or incompatible drivers or poorly written ones will cause reboots as you described. VIA chipsets and drivers are rather famous for this. You can test this by booting into safe mode. Most likely the offending driver is not loaded and the system will be stable. Bad PSs will shut down and not reboot. You could spend 40 hours trying to fix it or you could back it up and do a clean wipe and reload. Now here is another possibility and that is bad RAM. This is not rare. If you have more than one stick swap them and see if the system either gets worse or stabilizes. If the reload does not fix it, you have bad tag RAM or bad cache RAM and the MB is toast. A bad CPU is highly unlikely, in 20 years I have seen it twice.

TTech -

I would think that bad caps would reboot the PC whether I was in Windows or DOS & it doesn't reboot in DOS, so.....

PMCook -

I'll look at the RAM, there used to be a test for ram that you could run, I'll try to find it.

Drivers are a possibility. I'll look into them. I guess I'll just start deleting programs and seeing when things clear up.

Sam

I'd give it a coffee enema......

The only hardware-type issue might be CPU.... In DOS, with nothing going on, the CPU would probably be just on the safe side, then in Windows with more load (even when "idle" windows has a lot to do) the temp climbs a little higher past the safe zone....

One of the boot CD's that have been discussed in other threads should have some exercising utilities. Also, try booting up knoppix, a bootable CD with a linux variant. With a more active OS running, maybe it'll reboot on ya. At the very least, you'll need it to help recover files from your C drive before it gets formatted. (linux can read NTFS, but has trouble writing it)

Grab an old hard drive and slap a load of your O/S on it and see if your PC reboots. You might get away with a repair load of your O/S depending on what your using.
I'd say also a chipset/driver problem. Todays motherboards are fairly cheap so moving up might make sense depending on the other factors of your old box.

I didn't read the earlier thread, but there may be another reason for the rebooting.
A 3rd party "Service" that cannot load. Services are background programs that load either automatically or on demand and stay loaded. Windows (like most OSs) provides a facility for actions to be taken automatically when Services for whatever reason do not load (This is because most Services are important). The Service provider may have set the particular service to try to load an X number of times, and if unsuccesful to reboot the machine.
Is there anything else that hasn't been working properly? If there is, one of its component services may be the culprit.

Also, if you are going to use this PC for work, may I recommend you DO NOT get a "cheap starter". You'll indeed end up with one. ALL PC companies will try to sell you an underpowered machine - especially if you go through the home divisions. Any and all software doesn't get simpler - it's as much technical as natural evolution.

Some more info that could be helpful
Download and run this:
boot log analyzer
This may tell you what refuses to load on boot. XP generates a boot log, but it's arcane. This software makes it readable. The evaluation version is fully functional.

If you have the time, run MSCONFIG, look at Startup, and compare what you don't know in there with this list:
Startup List .
Who knows, there may be something in there that shouldn't be. But use caution though.