Vista Freeze and Auto-Reboot

[Quik]

Hello,

My computer freezes and reboots when I surf the web. I use Firefox, Internet
Explorer just doesn't cut it for me. My Windows is fully up to date. It also
happens when I use Azureus.

AMD Athlon 64+ X2 6400+ Black Edition

Zalman CNPS9500 AM2 Cooling

WD Raptor 36 GB Primary Hard Drive

ASUS M2N-E SLI Motherboard

Seagate 7200.1 500 GB Hard Drive

Ultra X-Finity 600w PSU

OCZ Vista Upgrade Dual Channel 4096MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz Memory

BFG Tech nVidia 8800 GTX 768 MB Video Card

Apevia Black X-Plorer ATX Mid-Tower Case (to which I have attached 3 80mm
fans and one 120mm fan)

What do you think it can be?

 

[Quik]

Just happened again while viewing the optional updates. I'm using Windows
Vista Ultimate.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Do you have a way to read the mobo temperature?

 

[Quik]

Yes, ASUS' PCPROBE II it idles at 36 and maxes out at 43. Asus says it
shouldn't go past 45-50, I'm quite sure cooling isn't the problem

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Good. That is the first thing to check with the symtoms you are seeing.
The next step is to reseat the video card, then the ram. After that,
connectors.

 

[Quik]

Good. That is the first thing to check with the symtoms you are seeing.
The next step is to reseat the video card, then the ram. After that,
connectors.

Already done all that, it's not the ram or the video card. What do you mean
by "connectors"? Specifically which connectors could cause this to happen?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

The hard drive connectors come to mind.

Already done all that, it's not the ram or the video card. What do you
mean
by "connectors"? Specifically which connectors could cause this to happen?

 

[Quik]

Okay, I just checked the SATA power and data cables and redid my connections
and booted the computer. Less than 10 minutes after I started using it, it
crashed again. The connections looked fine to begin with though. Any other
ideas?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Is Firefox up to date with the lastest patch? There have been memory leak
issues with Firefox and since you seem to always be surfing when this
happens I just thought I'd ask. If it is up to date then it might be time
to uninstall it and reboot for testing purposes. Azureus as well. If the
issue persists when testing with just IE7 at least you will have eliminated
some likely possibilities.

 

[Quik]

Well I reinstalled Winamp, Azureus and Firefox and I had them running all at
once now and the computer crashed again. It took longer to crash but it
crashed. I was looking at vista's resource monitor and it was telling me
almost 150 hard fails/min on the Azureus.exe process. I did a test with
Microsoft's Memory Diagnostic and I had 2 runs with it and 0 errors...

It just happened recently though, I had the computer running for a month and
a half without problems and its starting to give me problems now.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I have seen some of the gurus on memory that post in this ng comment that
the results from the Microsoft diagnostic is not definitive and that a more
exacting tester is needed if one is to eliminate memory as a possible cause.
I have used Azureus on x64 Vista without the behavior you describe. I will
leave the memory issue to the gurus in the hope that one will respond. In
the meantime I suggest you take a look at this KB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936212/en-us

 

[Anders Cederbergh]

I have had the same type of problem, but I was lucky, when I changed the
powerunit from a 350W to 420W the computer worked just fine.


Good luck

 

[Carlos]

Colin,
A faulty memory stick could be the cause.
In that case the OP might want to download Memtest86
(http://www.memtest86.com/), the memory test utility recommended by
many (one of Charlie's favorites).
Direct D/L link for ISO version:
http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.4a.iso.zip
Direct D/L link for floppy installer: http://www.memtest86.com/memtest34a.zip

I also think that the 600W PSU might be working at max capacity, let us not
forget that he has a 6400+ processor (this beast eats 125W!) and an 8800GTX
card (another watts eating device).

Carlos

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Thanks for jumping in Carlos! I needed the help.

 

[Carlos]

You are welcome, Colin.
Our beloved 64-bit NG is too quiet lately so I tend to take a peek at this
one and do my stuff here too.
I am electrical engineer so hardware always attracts me (second place after
women!).

Carlos

 

[Quik]

I think I may have gotten it fixed. I believe the problem was from the AMD
Dual Core Optimizer program that AMD offers on their site. I had installed it
to see if there was a difference, there wasn't. I think that may have caused
all the recent problems I had. I'll let you know if it happens again. Thank
you all for helping.

By the way Carlos, I was thinking about changing the PSU, I might do it
soon, there are too many power cables in the case and it's very noisy.

 

[Quik]

Nevermind, I don't have it fixed, it just recently started happening again
after 5 days of having it under full control. What could the problem be?