Need help troubleshooting problem with frequent reboots!!

[BingBong]

I recently put together an Intel Pentium machine and installed WinXP
SP1 without any difficulty at all.The machine (see specs below) runs
really well; the only problem is that it frequently, without any
warning, just reboots itself. This happens about a half-dozen times a
day and doesn't seem to occur when the processor is heavily loaded. It
can happen when the processor is very active or when it is just
sitting there doing nothing.

Specs: ASUS P4c 800E with 3.0 GHz Pentium 4, 2 GB of DDR RAM from
Crucial, ATI Radeon All in Wonder 9800, Western Digital 120 GB SATA
hard drives x 2, in an Enlight midtower case with 2 DVD writers (One
Plextor, one Pioneer)

It happens with all of the software I have loaded, not any one
particular piece of software. The software is nothing weird, just
WinXP, MS Office XP, Photoshop and some DVD authoring things like
Premiere. No games or obscure apps on this machine.

At first this smelled like thermal shutdown to me because of the fast
proceesor, so I invested in every type of fan (well not really). I put
in a couple of extra case fans with the airflow directed over the CPU
and video board and out the machine. ASUS Probe reported CPU temps of
high 40's. Then I added this huge big aftermarket CPU fan with
Ceramique thermal grease (sorry, don't remember the brand) and the CPU
temp is always between 38 and 41 degrees C. The Motherboard T is
usually around 32 C.

I don't know what the next step in troubleshooting would be. I've
never run across this type of problem before. My initial reaction is
that this is hardware related and not Windows related, but I'm not
sure.

I keep getting that damned "MS Windows - The system has recovered from
a serious error - send error report to MS" every time after it
reboots. When I look into the error log, all it has is "The following
files will be included in this error report C:
windows\minidump\mini050104-04.dmp and C:\documents and
settings....\temp\wer5f.tmp.dir00\sysdata.xml" Of couse, I cannot
decipher these.

Has anyone seen this behaviour before? Any ideas how I can
troubleshoot it?

Thanks

BingBong

 

[DaveW]

It sounds to me like you may have an underpowered/unstable/cheap power
supply unit that is overloading and forcing a reboot.

 

[Bob]

I recently put together an Intel Pentium machine and installed WinXP
SP1 without any difficulty at all.The machine (see specs below) runs
really well; the only problem is that it frequently, without any
warning, just reboots itself. This happens about a half-dozen times a
day and doesn't seem to occur when the processor is heavily loaded. It
can happen when the processor is very active or when it is just
sitting there doing nothing.

Specs: ASUS P4c 800E with 3.0 GHz Pentium 4, 2 GB of DDR RAM from
Crucial, ATI Radeon All in Wonder 9800, Western Digital 120 GB SATA
hard drives x 2, in an Enlight midtower case with 2 DVD writers (One
Plextor, one Pioneer)

It happens with all of the software I have loaded, not any one
particular piece of software. The software is nothing weird, just
WinXP, MS Office XP, Photoshop and some DVD authoring things like
Premiere. No games or obscure apps on this machine.

I don't know what the next step in troubleshooting would be. I've
never run across this type of problem before. My initial reaction is
that this is hardware related and not Windows related, but I'm not
sure.

I keep getting that damned "MS Windows - The system has recovered from
a serious error - send error report to MS" every time after it
reboots. When I look into the error log, all it has is "The following
files will be included in this error report C:
windows\minidump\mini050104-04.dmp and C:\documents and
settings....\temp\wer5f.tmp.dir00\sysdata.xml" Of couse, I cannot
decipher these.

Has anyone seen this behaviour before? Any ideas how I can
troubleshoot it?

I had identical symptoms, discovered bad RAM only after running memtest86
for fourteen hours. A nice long memtest would be a prudent next step.

What power supply do you have?

Bob J.

 

[John]

I was wondering if there is an error being generated.

Go to Start | control Panel | System | Advanced | Startup And Recovery | settings.

Uncheck the automatically restart.

See if this will reveal anything.

Good Luck!

 

[Louise]

I was wondering if there is an error being generated.

Go to Start | control Panel | System | Advanced | Startup And Recovery | settings.

Uncheck the automatically restart.

See if this will reveal anything.

Good Luck!

I had this with an Asus P4C 800 E Deluxe. Since it was built for me by
a company I'd never dealt with before, I was pretty paranoid.

The result was a faulty Palm driver from the use of an old Handspring
Visor.

I was only able to track it down after following the above advice which
led to more information on the BSD.

Louise

 

[BingBong]

Looks like I might have found the culprit--memory.

Thanks to all for your input; very much appreciated.

I ran memtest86 and the machine hung after running for 16 minutes. I
suspected bad DDR so I started pulling out sticks one by one. All of
them are DDR800 512 MB each x 4 with CAS latency 3. Two are from
Crucial and two are from some other manufacturer (I forgot to look
when the machine was open). The two from Crucial were added last so
these were the two that I pulled out first. Once these two were out,
the problem was solved. No hangs or reboots since. I have been
multitasking several apps and hitting them hard to stress the machine
and it has been very stable so far. Let's give it some time to see
whether this was really the cause.

Assuming that the DDR is all the same (same speed, CAS latency, etc.),
is it still possible to have memory incompatibilities between
different manufacturers? I thought that that is why we have standards,
to avoid this type of thing.

For my next step, I will add in one stick at a time of the Crucial DDR
to see if it is one or the other.

Does Crucial take back or replace memory if there is a problem?

BB