Computer randomly reboots

[no-email]

I have a 1GHZ IBM Netvista computer. I am running Win98se.
At least once a week, if not several times a week this computer will
just reboot without any warning. I am not referring to the occasional
blue screens that happen with Win98, those happen once and awhile, and
I'm not too worried about them, knowing they are just part of Win98,
and they happen less often than these reboots.

It seems the reboots usually occur the most often when the computer is
not being used, and is in idle. I DO NOT have any power saving or
screen savers turned on, so it's nothing like that.

Generally, what happens is this. I leave the computer, often have a
couple web pages and Agent loaded. I normally manually go offline
when I am not using the computer to avoid tying up my phone line
(dialup). So, the computer is doing nothing except sitting there with
a few things on the screen. I come home a few hours later and find
the computer with the C: dos prompt on the screen. (I have shutdown
set to boot to dos). I have to reboot and everything is fine again
until the next occurance of this problem.

Yesterday I was on the computer typing a newsgroup message, and had
several web pages loaded in the background. All of a sudden the
computer just shut off. The screen went black, I heard one long and 4
short beeps, and there was nothing on the screen, and the computer was
shut down, except the power light was still on, but no fans or drives
spinning. I had to shut off the power to get anything to happen,
since CTRL ALT DEL did nothing. When I turned it back on, everything
loaded normally, and I went back online. I bagan to load some web
pages and found the entire system was running so slow I could barely
get the cursor to move. To move it a half inch meant moving the mouse
10 inches on the desk.

I rebooted again, this time leaving the computer off for several
minutes before restarting it. I rebooted again, and everything has
worked fine ever since.

What the f##K is going on?

I will mention that I have run Scandisk as well as Diagnostics from
the manufacturer on both of my hard drives, and they are fine. I
checked both the P.S. fan and CPU fan, and both are running. I also
have tried to remove one of my two RAM strips, and this problem
happens with either (or both) strips. I also pushed all connectors to
be sure they were tight inside the case.

The chipset and CPU are Intel.

Anyone have any idea what's going on?

 

[Tim]

(e-mail address removed) wrote on 10 Jan 2008

I have a 1GHZ IBM Netvista computer. I am running Win98se.
At least once a week, if not several times a week this
computer will just reboot without any warning. I am not
referring to the occasional blue screens that happen with
Win98, those happen once and awhile, and I'm not too
worried about them, knowing they are just part of Win98,
and they happen less often than these reboots.

It seems the reboots usually occur the most often when the
computer is not being used, and is in idle. I DO NOT have
any power saving or screen savers turned on, so it's
nothing like that.

Generally, what happens is this. I leave the computer,
often have a couple web pages and Agent loaded. I normally
manually go offline when I am not using the computer to
avoid tying up my phone line (dialup). So, the computer is
doing nothing except sitting there with a few things on the
screen. I come home a few hours later and find the
computer with the C: dos prompt on the screen. (I have
shutdown set to boot to dos). I have to reboot and
everything is fine again until the next occurance of this
problem.

Yesterday I was on the computer typing a newsgroup message,
and had several web pages loaded in the background. All of
a sudden the computer just shut off. The screen went
black, I heard one long and 4 short beeps, and there was
nothing on the screen, and the computer was shut down,
except the power light was still on, but no fans or drives
spinning. I had to shut off the power to get anything to
happen, since CTRL ALT DEL did nothing. When I turned it
back on, everything loaded normally, and I went back
online. I bagan to load some web pages and found the
entire system was running so slow I could barely get the
cursor to move. To move it a half inch meant moving the
mouse 10 inches on the desk.

I rebooted again, this time leaving the computer off for
several minutes before restarting it. I rebooted again,
and everything has worked fine ever since.

What the f##K is going on?

I will mention that I have run Scandisk as well as
Diagnostics from the manufacturer on both of my hard
drives, and they are fine. I checked both the P.S. fan and
CPU fan, and both are running. I also have tried to remove
one of my two RAM strips, and this problem happens with
either (or both) strips. I also pushed all connectors to
be sure they were tight inside the case.

The chipset and CPU are Intel.

Anyone have any idea what's going on?

Greetings,

Do a google on "ibm netvista reboot problem". Sounds like the
problem you're experiencing.

Tim

 

[no-email]

(e-mail address removed) wrote on 10 Jan 2008

Greetings,

Do a google on "ibm netvista reboot problem". Sounds like the
problem you're experiencing.

Tim

I did this and got only one webpage. Yes it does sound like my
problem, but there's no followups to tell what to do to fix it. I
have the model 6341, not the 6578 mentioned on that webpage, but
they're likely similar models being in the 6xxx series.
Maybe it's just time to get rid of this thing and go back to my old
700mhz system until I can buy something newer. I cant go much newer
anyhow, because I want to continue with win98. Xp is not my thing,
and I wont even consider Vista.

By the way, I occasionally run Win2K on this computer, when I swap
hard drives. I have never seen a reboot on 2K, but I use it so seldom
that it's not likely had a chance, and I dont have Win2K setup to go
on the internet.

I really doubt this is a software issue anyhow. Because yesterday
when I did the reboot and it was running so slow the mouse cursor
would barely move, I shut down to Dos, and when I typed DIR, it took
at least a minute to *slowly* show all the dirs in the root directory
of C:, and finally get back to the C: prompt.

Thanks

 

[Tim]

(e-mail address removed) wrote on 10 Jan 2008

I did this and got only one webpage. Yes it does sound
like my problem, but there's no followups to tell what to
do to fix it. I have the model 6341, not the 6578
mentioned on that webpage, but they're likely similar
models being in the 6xxx series. Maybe it's just time to
get rid of this thing and go back to my old 700mhz system
until I can buy something newer. I cant go much newer
anyhow, because I want to continue with win98. Xp is not
my thing, and I wont even consider Vista.

I got 2500 hits .... this seemed pertinent, if not typical:

http://forums.techguy.org/t182983.html

from 2004, several down from original post,

"Hello, I have a simillary problem with 2 netvista 6342,
after call IBM about this problem, they told me, it's a
malfunction of the capacitors around the processeur."

You can look at the capacitors on the mb and specifically around
the cpu to see if there are any pots with domed heads and or
leaks.

I really doubt this is a software issue anyhow. Because
yesterday when I did the reboot and it was running so slow
the mouse cursor would barely move, I shut down to Dos, and
when I typed DIR, it took at least a minute to *slowly* show
all the dirs in the root directory of C:, and finally get
back to the C: prompt.

This really does sound like a mb & heat situation. On one
machine the heat from a tv pci card was enough to throw the
duron 1100 cpu temp to 47 degrees and more. And, the system got
very peculiar! <g> A fan and some relocating of cards fixed
this and brought the cpu temp down to 37C.

As for new mb's ... I had decided to go with an AM2 board. So,
first I've got xp sp2 running on my ol' gigabyte G7xe with a
duron 1000mhz as a test, so to speak. <s&g> It is more stable
in some situations but is still too obnoxiously M$. Still, it
is possible to clean down a bunch of services and media related
junk ... but not exactly a clean machine. LOL!

Last time I looked there were some mbs on NewEgg which had
driver support for 98se, and most support 2K I think.

Be well,

Tim

 

[Tim]

(e-mail address removed) wrote on 10 Jan 2008


Doin' some snooping. Might contact IBM. Seems that there was a
world wide recall of the mb.

 

[kony]

This really does sound like a mb & heat situation.

While he may have a motherboard failure-in-progress, the
above paragraph sounds more like a drive or drive cabling
failure. Granted the heat can effect a drive as well but
often that comes in the form of lockups instead of very
sluggish behavior.

Since the data on the drive could be at risk I suggest
running the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics on it, then
powering off the system, unplugging the hard drive so it has
no further wear on it for awhile while running memtest86+ to
check for memory errors - since if the system has memory
errors they ought to be corrected, OR the drive moved to
another system first, before trying to copy data off if the
drive were failing.

 

[DaveW]

It sounds like either the power supply unit and/or the motherboard are
failing. The easiest way to find out which is to replace the PSU with a
known working one and see if that fixes the problem.

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

I did this and got only one webpage. Yes it does sound like my
problem, but there's no followups to tell what to do to fix it. I
have the model 6341, not the 6578 mentioned on that webpage, but
they're likely similar models being in the 6xxx series.
Maybe it's just time to get rid of this thing and go back to my old
700mhz system until I can buy something newer. I cant go much newer
anyhow, because I want to continue with win98. Xp is not my thing,
and I wont even consider Vista.

Consider mounting Linux. Ubuntu would be a good choice. You can
even dual boot if you wish. Try <http://shipit.ubuntu.com>

 

[OscartheGrouch]

I did this and got only one webpage. Yes it does sound like my
problem, but there's no followups to tell what to do to fix it. I
have the model 6341, not the 6578 mentioned on that webpage, but
they're likely similar models being in the 6xxx series.
Maybe it's just time to get rid of this thing and go back to my old
700mhz system until I can buy something newer. I cant go much newer
anyhow, because I want to continue with win98. Xp is not my thing,
and I wont even consider Vista.

By the way, I occasionally run Win2K on this computer, when I swap
hard drives. I have never seen a reboot on 2K, but I use it so seldom
that it's not likely had a chance, and I dont have Win2K setup to go
on the internet.

I really doubt this is a software issue anyhow. Because yesterday
when I did the reboot and it was running so slow the mouse cursor
would barely move, I shut down to Dos, and when I typed DIR, it took
at least a minute to *slowly* show all the dirs in the root directory
of C:, and finally get back to the C: prompt.

Thanks

When mine went through this problem, I pulled the memory out and
reseated it, both sticks. No more problem. I'm not saying this will work
for you, but in my case it did. It was passing a win memory test most of
the time but failed a couple times. That's what made me suspect memory.
In my case the memory is still fine but one (or more) of the memory
slots were bad. It's something to try.

 

[Joel]

I have a 1GHZ IBM Netvista computer. I am running Win98se.
At least once a week, if not several times a week this computer will
just reboot without any warning. I am not referring to the occasional
blue screens that happen with Win98, those happen once and awhile, and
I'm not too worried about them, knowing they are just part of Win98,
and they happen less often than these reboots.

<snip>

I only read the first part then quick browsed through the whole message
trying to catch some important part but don't see any hi-lited part, so I
may miss it/them.

But just by reading the first part it seems like the CPU may get overheat
(if not power supply). And I would try to BLOW the dirt off the CPU and CPU
cooler hoping it will help.

 

[no-email]

(e-mail address removed) wrote on 10 Jan 2008


I got 2500 hits .... this seemed pertinent, if not typical:

Maybe I should have not used the "quotes" in the search.

http://forums.techguy.org/t182983.html

I've been reading this. Seems these boards were created with bad
caps. All I can figure is the caps they used were poorly made. Heck,
I have electronics devices that are much older and dont have this
problem.

I DO NOT have any caps with bulges or noticable leaking. But I can
still assume there is one that's not up to snuff. I'd guess that by
the time I buy all new caps and replace them all, I may as well just
buy a new motherboard. The thing is that I need one that can ue the
same CPU, memory, and will fit in the case. Not only to save money,
but also because I dont want some of the newer mobos that cant run
Win98 and 2K. I have no intention to upgrade Windows beyond 2K.

I doubt this is a heat issue, especially this time of year, when I
keep the heat turned down to 60 deg. in the house when I am away.
Just for the heck of it, I will try another PSU. I got several that
will power the thing, even if they may not physically fit in the case.
I rarely even put the cover on the case anyhow, so I can rig something
up if that does actually solve the problem, or just buy a PSU that
will fit, after testing with another PSU.