Computer restarts spontaneously. Help!

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Brown
  • Start date Start date
J

John Brown

I do a great deal of video editing and have recently developed a problem with my
computer----it keeps restarting spontaneously. Sometimes after many hours in
mid-task, and sometimes after just ten or twenty minutes or a short time.

Many times it hangs on reboot at a black screen....after not recognizing all the
drives as it boots. First attempt it will recognize Drive D.....Second time:
Drive C and D....then Third time around it will usually recognize all five
drives then boot into Windows XP. I've got onboard Raid plus a Raid card to
manage all the drives...which has worked fine for the last couple of years.

Can anybody please give me a clue as to how to correct this? I've already
unchecked the option to Restart when there is a computer error. This started
happening only occasionally a few weeks ago and seems to be getting
progressively worse. I've run Norton, Adwatch, and Housecall virus and trojan
scans. I'm at a loss at this point.

I've got Phoeniz AwardBios Ver. 6.0 , AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+ processor, and an
ASUSTeK A7N8X motherboard.

thanks for any help,
John
 
Sounds like heat issues. Five drives in a standard case will push the
thermal conditions way up. Are you drives SATA (Serial) with the
small cables or the traditional IDE Flat ribbon cables ? Those cables
can and do block air-flow through the cabinet. Another issue with
drive counts that high is "Stacking", where the drives are mounted
directly on top of each other.
I would check the temp sensors and see what type of heat levels
you are dealing with.
 
Sounds like heat issues. Five drives in a standard case will push the
thermal conditions way up. Are you drives SATA (Serial) with the
small cables or the traditional IDE Flat ribbon cables ? Those cables
can and do block air-flow through the cabinet. Another issue with
drive counts that high is "Stacking", where the drives are mounted
directly on top of each other.
I would check the temp sensors and see what type of heat levels
you are dealing with.
Click to expand...

Thanks...I'll look into that, but I seriously doubt heat is the issue.

I keep the case sides removed and the case open at all times for easier
access...and three of the drives are actually in individual housings, connected
by cable to the Raid card in the main case. Also, I felt each of the drives and
none of them are hot to the touch.

Anybody got any other ideas? This is very frustrating and messing me up when I
need to do extended compression/rendering that can take many hours---only to
have the thing spontaneously shut down in mid-task.

John
 
I would check your System & Application Event logs. There
might be errors logged that could lead you to the cause. For
a PC to abruptly reboot is likely either a Temp or voltage
issue that prevents XP from BSOD'ing.

I do a fair amount of Audio mastering and even with 1-Gig of
RAM and SCSI drives it pushes my Intel 3.0 pretty hard. Any
time I work with DVD mastering my temps rise very quickly.

Have you checked your BIOS setup to see what Temp will
trigger an automatic shutdown. Also see if Asus provides a
real-time monitor tool to watch temps & voltages and set it
up to log data.

Maybe it isn't thermal, but if you do discover the cause be sure
to post the info as I would like to know the answer.
 
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