Pat K said:
I am writing this from work. My system at home crashes
every 20 minutes. This gives me enought time to get my e-
mail, etc. I have an XP home system, I have a firewall
and virus protection, have cleaned up for MSBLAST in
August, it is not that. I have restored my system back to
two previous checkpoints, have downloaded XP updates and I
can't seem to fix this problem. Any answere?
Pat K
What exactly happens when it "crashes"?
Does it just freeze up and halt right where it is?
Does it automatically shut down and reboot itself?
Does it produce a "Blue Screen Of Death" STOP error message and then
lock up?
If it just freezes up and halts with everything still visible on the
screen then that is most likely caused by a hardware problem, with
overheating being the prime culprit. Check cooling fans etc. and see
about getting some temperature monitor software with alarms running on
the computer.
If it automatically shuts down and restarts then that is probably
caused by a "system failure" class error. Right click on My Computer
and select Manage. Expand the Event Viewer category and look through
each of the three sub-categories for the red flagged error records.
The date and time of these should correspond to your restarts.
Double click on an error record to see the details of the error.
You can change this restart behaviour if you want.
Open Control Panel - System - Advanced
In the Startup and Recovery section (bottom) click on the Settings
button to open the Startup and Recovery window.
In the System Failure (middle) section of that window there are 3
checkboxes, the bottom one labelled Automatically restart. Click on
that checkbox to clear it.
Click on OK and Apply as needed to exit.
After that change the computer will no longer restart when a system
failure occurs. Instead it will probably throw up a "Blue Screen Of
Death" with a STOP error message and then halt completely, requiring a
manual power off and restart (or reset if it has a hardware reset
switch).
But the contents of the STOP error message will give a specific clue
as to the underlying cause of the problem. Post the STOP message
information back here if you need advice or assistance with that.
And if the system is already producing a STOP error message when it
"crashes" then please post the complete contents of the STOP message
back here including all of the parameters and address codes.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
