Computer just resets

[Moo]

My computer has developed a habit of randomly resetting recently and it is
(would you believe it) really annoying!

It appears to happen at random and has happen once whilst playing GTA:SA and
about 4 times using windows with a light-medium program usage at the time of
each crash (usually IE, Outlook etc).

The system log (from event viewer) shows the following as a System Error:

Error code 100000d1, parameter1 00000000, parameter2 00000002, parameter3
00000000, parameter4 f69f01e3.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.



My system is as follows:

Abit IC7 motherboard (with onboard sound)
Pentium 4 3.2ghz
Radeon 9800pro graphics
1GB ram

All drivers are up to date including the latest windows patches.

How can I track down what is causing this problem?

Many thanks,

Moo

 

[John]

My computer has developed a habit of randomly resetting recently and it is
(would you believe it) really annoying!

It appears to happen at random and has happen once whilst playing GTA:SA and
about 4 times using windows with a light-medium program usage at the time of
each crash (usually IE, Outlook etc).

The system log (from event viewer) shows the following as a System Error:

Error code 100000d1, parameter1 00000000, parameter2 00000002, parameter3
00000000, parameter4 f69f01e3.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

When my system started rebooting / bluescreening ---- it was bad mem.
It was totally random. Sometimes it was immediate , other times it
took over a day.

I thought it was a lot of other problems at first like drivers.

For the heck of it always do the simple obvious stuff first. You know
get memtest86 and test your mem for a few hours at least. Also check
the temps with motherboard monitor or speedfan - all are free programs
which you can find easily with google.

For the heck of it check your hard disks too with scan disk in Win XP.
And any fans or heatsinks on your motherboard. The small fan on an old
Asus KT133a board worked intermittently and caused me tons of problems
years ago when I gave the RMA replacement from ASUS to someone I know
, which ahd the bad fan. It would intermittently and randomly freeze.

Also check to see you capacitors arent swollen or leaking with brown
stuff caked on them or near them. Its far less likely with newer
systems like Pent4s though. I havent heard of any but you never know
since there are some really crappy companies making boards.

Also check the fan on your video card to make sure its turning and not
clogged up with dust. My CPU and video fans get completely dust
clogged after a few months. I clean them out with a qtip and
toothbrush. Next start stripping it down taking any extra stuff out
that may be causing the problem and if you can swapping out the rest
of the components with stuff you know that works.

 

[Moo]

My computer has developed a habit of randomly resetting recently and it is
(would you believe it) really annoying!

It appears to happen at random and has happen once whilst playing GTA:SA
and about 4 times using windows with a light-medium program usage at the
time of each crash (usually IE, Outlook etc).

The system log (from event viewer) shows the following as a System Error:

Error code 100000d1, parameter1 00000000, parameter2 00000002, parameter3
00000000, parameter4 f69f01e3.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.



My system is as follows:

Abit IC7 motherboard (with onboard sound)
Pentium 4 3.2ghz
Radeon 9800pro graphics
1GB ram

All drivers are up to date including the latest windows patches.

How can I track down what is causing this problem?

Many thanks,

Moo

Further to the above I have turned off auto-reset so I now get the BSOD. It
seems to be complaining about ALCXWDM.SYS file for some reason.....

Any ideas?

 

[John]

Further to the above I have turned off auto-reset so I now get the BSOD. It
seems to be complaining about ALCXWDM.SYS file for some reason.....

Any ideas?

Well a simple search seems to hint that it has something to do with
onboard audio . If thats true I would try uninstalling it and see if
it still has the problem.

All the online suggestions say use the drivers that came with your
board and not the MS WIN XP supplied drivers for you onboard sound.
Some posters say they got the crash problem when they did a WIN UPDATE
that updated that driver.

Have no idea if any of this is actually relevent in your case though.

 

[CBFalconer]

Further to the above I have turned off auto-reset so I now get the
BSOD. It seems to be complaining about ALCXWDM.SYS file for some
reason.....

This is the sort of thing that _could_ be caused by a random cosmic
ray during a file transfer, such as occurs during disk
defragmentation. The result doesn't show up until much later, when
something uses the fouled file. The protection is to always have
ECC memory in your system.

At any rate, try replacing that file with a copy of the original,
from the original CDRom. All your backups are suspicious, because
they could have been made after the damage occurred but before it
was detected. That is one reason why undetected soft memory errors
are extremely dangerous.

Again, the only known protection is ECC memory systems, which would
probably cost you an extra 20 to 40 USD at purchase time. If you
bought a MB without the capability you can't even upgrade to it,
and you can't tell if your MB is capable without looking at the
documentation. Bioses don't even show the ability when the memory
chips don't have it. Then they allow you to turn it on and off.
Off is needed for memory tests, else any errors will be corrected
and never detected.