Random reboots and shutdowns

[Dan]

Ok, here's the deal. I had an old PC that was running
fine on WinXP Pro for over 1 year (Athlon Thunderbird
1.4Ghz, 512MB RAM, etc.). A few months ago, it started
randomly rebooting. I had changed no hardware at all. I
would always get the fabled Device Driver Serious Error
when the PC rebooted.

So this past weekend, I decided to upgrade one of my PCs,
and I put all the old parts into my PC that kept
crashing. The PC is now an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ with an
Abit KX7-333 motherboard. The only things that are the
same are the 2 hard drives, cd-rom, and cd burner. After
I put together the new parts, I reformatted the drive and
installed XP Pro again. First thing I did was to install
SP1 and all the updates. Then I installed the latest VIA
4 in 1 drivers (KX7-333 is a VIA based mobo), and finally
my soundcard and video drivers. I am still getting random
reboots and Device Driver errors.

I used diagnostic utilities from Maxtor and Western
Digital to check my hard drives and they both reported no
errors. No problems with my Plextor CD Burner or I/O CD-
Rom.

I even upgraded my power supply from a 350 Watt to a 450
Watt (Both Enermax power supplies).

What gets me is that even with new hardware, I still get
these reboots. I know it's not the hardware because I
never had this problem when the motherboard, etc. was in
a different PC. It's almost like the darn CASE is causing
problems.

Anywho, here's my PC specs:

BEFORE REBUILD:
AMD Thunderbird 1.4Ghz
Gigabyte GA7DXR motherboard (VIA based)
512MB Crucial PC2100 SDRAM
PNY Technologies nVidia GeForce 2 GTS PRO 64MB
Soundblaster Live! Value
Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM ATA100 hard drive (primary)
Maxtor 60GB 7200RPM ATA100 hard drive (secondary)
Plextor 24/10/40A CD-RW
I/O 48x CD-ROM
Mitsumi Floppy Drive
Enermax EG365P power supply (350 Watt)

AFTER REBUILD:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
Abit KX7-333motherboard (VIA based)
512MB Crucial PC2100 SDRAM
Leadtek Winfast Ultra TD nVidia Geforce 4 ti 4600 128MB
Soundblaster Audigy 2
Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM ATA100 hard drive (primary)
Maxtor 60GB 7200RPM ATA100 hard drive (secondary)
Plextor 24/10/40A CD-RW
I/O 48x CD-ROM
Mitsumi Floppy Drive
Enermax EG465P power supply (450 Watt)

As I said, all the hardware that is different AFTER the
rebuild, is hardware from a different PC which had no
rebooting problems. I also have thoroughly tested the
hard drives with diagnostic utilities.

The only things I can think is that one of the RAM sticks
may have gone bad. I am sure it has nothing to do with
any of the device drivers because they were working fine
in my other PC with XP Pro.

Please Microsoft, stop blaming hardware. Let's try to
figure this one out as it seems a lot of people have it.

 

[Harry]

I am having the same problem, although it mostly happens
while the system is comming up. Sometines before logging
in, sometimes after and sometimes when sstaring the
browser or Outlook express.
I noticed after a while that the problem (takes a system
dump and re-boots) seemed to happen when connecting to
the network.
What I did was unplug my network cable. It never crashes
when I do this. I then go into the network connections,
disable the connection, plug the cable back in, then
enable the connection. I rarly get a problem after doing
this.
I still don't know what the problem is, I have changed my
NIC card and put it in a different slot and even changed
the driver. But it still happens (when the cable is
connected).
Try this and let us know if it makes a difference.