I Still Have Random Restarts- HELP!!!

[John]

Hello group,

Like the subject title says my computer is still restarting randomly. This
is my third time posting about this problem. Some of the possible problems
people said were, bad ram, bad video card (or drivers), and the PSU. Well, I
ran microsoft's memory test and Memtest86 and they both couldn't find any
errors w/ the ram. Next I switched the video card w/ a friend of mine, my
computer still restarted. Then the more I thought when it happens it did
sound like a power problem. (Sometimes it restarts when I access my 2nd
HDD). So just recently I bought a new 510W PSU from pc power and cooling
(they make very good PSU's). The first day I put it in no problems I thought
alright its fixed, I was wrong. The next day it restarted three times within
an hour. I'm about to use my computer as a paper weight! Any ideas that I
can try? Some people have said its overheating, its not, I keep track of the
CPU and system temp, and they are not even close to overheating. Could it be
a software problem, I've looked at event viewer after a restart, no errors,
I've ran Dr. Watson, no errors, and I have "automatic restart on errors"
turned off. One thing that I've noticed but I but know if this is the
problem, is that there are five IRQ #'s that are shared by two different
resources. Anyways any help would be appeciated.

Thanks, John

Here is my system:

P4 2.6ghz
1 Gig of crucial ram ( 2@ 512 sticks)
Tyan s5101 Motherboard
ATI Radeon 9200 Video card (current drivers from website)
510 Watt PSU (from pc power and cooling)
2- HDD (both maxtor (E)IDE 1-40gig, 1-10gig)
1- Toshiba DVD-ROM
1- Yamaha CD-RW
1-floppy drive
1- card cooler (plugs into PCI slot, cools video card)
1- PCI to USB card adapter

 

[Guest]

Does your PC simply reboot or is it bluescreening and then rebooting ?

 

[Slippery_one]

Hello group,

Like the subject title says my computer is still restarting
randomly. This is my third time posting about this problem. Some of
the possible problems people said were, bad ram, bad video card (or
drivers), and the PSU. Well, I ran microsoft's memory test and
Memtest86 and they both couldn't find any errors w/ the ram. Next I
switched the video card w/ a friend of mine, my computer still
restarted. Then the more I thought when it happens it did sound like
a power problem. (Sometimes it restarts when I access my 2nd HDD).
So just recently I bought a new 510W PSU from pc power and cooling
(they make very good PSU's). The first day I put it in no problems I
thought alright its fixed, I was wrong. The next day it restarted
three times within an hour. I'm about to use my computer as a paper
weight! Any ideas that I can try? Some people have said its
overheating, its not, I keep track of the CPU and system temp, and
they are not even close to overheating. Could it be a software
problem, I've looked at event viewer after a restart, no errors,
I've ran Dr. Watson, no errors, and I have "automatic restart on
errors" turned off. One thing that I've noticed but I but know if
this is the problem, is that there are five IRQ #'s that are shared
by two different resources. Anyways any help would be appeciated.

Thanks, John

Here is my system:

P4 2.6ghz
1 Gig of crucial ram ( 2@ 512 sticks)
Tyan s5101 Motherboard
ATI Radeon 9200 Video card (current drivers from website)
510 Watt PSU (from pc power and cooling)
2- HDD (both maxtor (E)IDE 1-40gig, 1-10gig)
1- Toshiba DVD-ROM
1- Yamaha CD-RW
1-floppy drive
1- card cooler (plugs into PCI slot, cools video card)
1- PCI to USB card adapter

Did you do anything prior to the problem that you can remember? Any
hardware changes? Any software changes? Have you tried resetting your
bios using the jumper and then setting it to load safe defaults?

I've had systems change bios settings on me for no apparent reason or
just from moving it from one room to another. Sometimes when replacing
hardware, the bios will keep hold of old settings and not respond to
changes until you hardware reset it.

I realize I'm just grasping at straws here, but sometimes it's best to
clear up the odd crap that can happen by trying things like this.

Have you formatted and re-installed windows?

 

[John]

It just restarts, no bluescreen. this is one time I wish it would bluescreen
then I would have something to go on.

John

 

[John]

I can't remember when it started happening. I'll try resetting the bois see
if that helps. I haven't reinstalled windows yet, I was hoping that I could
resolve it without reinstalling. I just don't think that it is a windows
problem, if it was wouldn't bluescreen?

Thanks
John

 

[frodo]

you've done a good job trying to track it down; RAM and PS are the first
suspects. you've ruled them out.

Yes, there are some Knowledge Base articals re: random restarts w/ XP and
SP2. Look for them, they may help (tho I'll bet a full wipe and
clean-install is in your future - sorry. slipstream yourself a SP2 CD,
and gather up all your drivers, serial numbers, bookmarks and cookies, etc
and burn 'em to CD just in case).

Are you sure there is no blue screen? double check that you have not told
the system to simply reset without first posting a warning screen:

my computer | properties | advanced | startup and recovery

uncheck "automatically restart", set other items as you please (I would
always write an event log entry, and perhaps a dump log would be useful in
this instance).

For the machine to simply reset w/o windows "catching" it first really
does wreak of a hardware failure, such as a glitch on hardware line like
the reset pin. double check your connections to the case switches, reseat
the DRAM modules, all MB connectors, etc.

a fresh BIOS reload followed by a CMOS reset couldn't hurt. And no
overclocking 'til you've solved the issue. Be sure to turn off any BIOS
caching/shadowing, you do not need that!

you sound like you know what you're doing, I'll bet you find it, but it
may take some perserverence, and patience! Good luck, and if all else
fails, drink heavily!

 

[Joshua Smith [MSFT]]

Hi John,

To determine what driver is causing the problem I need you to enable driver
verifier.
Steps:
1) Windows Key + R
2) Type in 'verifier' and hit enter
3) Make sure 'Create Standard Setting' is selected and hit next
4) Click on 'Select all drivers installed on this computer' and hit Finish
5) Reboot

There is a possibility that your computer will crash on reboot. If this
occurs hit F8 when rebooting just before the windows logo screen and select
the safe mode boot option. Follow the same steps above but on step 4 choose
'Select driver names from a list'; hit next; check the box next to any
driver where the provider is not Microsoft; hit Finish; reboot.

This will slow the performance of you computer a little while enabled but
will hopefully catch the driver causing corruption. Next time you crash
the blue screen will hopefully say something like
"DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION". If this occurs please send the
corresponding minidump (by default it is at c:\windows\Minidump ) my way.
If you have any questions or I didn't explain something well enough don't
hesitate to e-mail me back. Good Luck,


Joshua Smith
OpenGL Test Lab
Microsoft

 

[John]

I'm getting to that stage of drinking

John

 

[John]

Thank you for the info. I did what you said and when my computer was booting
up it was going fine until it was loading the items in the system tray and
then it restarted without the bluescreen. It did this twice. So then I
restarted in safe mode and went back into the driver verifier and selected
everything that wasn't microsoft. Then it booted up fine. I looked to see if
there was any minidump files and there are three. 1 from last year and 2
from today. I tried to email those to you but it said the message could not
be sent because one of the recipients was rejected by the server. What
should I do?

Thanks again,

John

 

[Joshua Smith [MSFT]]

Hi John,

Remove the 'online' portion of my email address. It is there to help me
avoid spam as this is my work address.

Joshua Smith
OpenGL Test Lab
Microsoft