Android412

A friend of mine was complaining that her desktop would randomly shut down, she thought it was a virus, I said I'd take a look at it for her.

Did the usual scans, there were some viruses, and a lot of adware. Cleaned it all up with spybot, ad aware, malwarebytes, nod32 and ran ccleaner and jkdefrag just for good measure.

As I was doing the scans, it would as she said randomly reboot. Even after it was cleaned up, still random reboots. Not always under heavy load either. So I ran chkdsk, same thing.

It's obviously been awhile since her last format, so I backed up everything she needed, formated, fully updated to xp sp3, still randomly reboots, although it seems to be less often, could just be me.

Next step I unhooked EVERYTHING from the MB, reseated the CPU, swapped the RAM for an extra stick I had laying around, still random reboots.

The last time it rebooted windows came up with an error saying that I should test the RAM, and ran it through a memory diagnostic for about 2 1/2 hours without problem.

I figure its down to the MB itself, although in theory it should have restarted during the diagnostic I would think. I would think PS next but same thing it should have shown up during diag.

Any ideas?

12PC-Hack

I assume she is running xp, I had same problem and worked for months trying to discover problem. I removed SP3 and have not had any reboots since. Worked for me, good luck

American Zombie

Have you tried another power supply yet?

Android412

no not yet, like I said I assumed that would show up during the memory diagnostic.

The one thing I did notice was that it seems to happen more often while using the internet connection.

ShepsCrook

Trying running scans in Safemode. That way it's running the bare minimum.

Then from there you should be able to determine some more. Honestly a good reinstall of windows wouldn't hurt it. And if it reboots during that install, you also know it's a hardware issue. More then likely Ram or PSU

Of course, it could be a driver issue for the network port causing a fatal error and crashing the system.

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Android412

I ran a couple scans in safe mode, same thing, reboots. I already did a format/reinstall, but it was from the recovery partition. Which made me want to put in disc of a Ubuntu I had so I could narrow it down to hardware. Put it in, downloaded a few movie trailers, and after about a half an hour it rebooted.

So would swapping out the PS be the next logical step (one I don't wanna do cause I'd have to rip apart my desktop to get it.) Or try taking out the video card and using the onboard video. I don't think I have an extra network card around, but I'll take a look.

ShepsCrook

Could disable the network port and run some tests in safemode to test the network.

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Admiral Michael

Have you tried resetting the BIOS to defaults?

I would also try the PSU swap as well. This is probably the culprit, as the issue is still present after a format/reinstall.

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ming

If you're sure the PC is clean of infection, then it's most likely to be a failing psu, or overheating.

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Johnny

That can be a couple of things; main things being the Power supply or heat ...

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American Zombie

Disable automatic restart so you can see what the error is.

Android412

so I found an extra NIC card I had lying around, put that in, and it hasn't restarted since, but the internet randomly stops working during heavy downloads (was testing the NIC)

I'm going to mess around with a few settings for the NIC, but I think I found the problem.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Android412

ok, so maybe its not fixed, about 20 mins. after my last post it rebooted. Took out the NIC, and swapped the PS, made it worse.

It seems to be narrowed down to the MB. Unless anyone has any other ideas.

Android412

tried this, didn't help, still rebooted

Admiral Michael

That means Windows isn't crashing to a BSOD.

When the PC reboots go into the BIOS and look at the temps. Altho usually with a overtemp trigger the computer would shutdown instead of reboot.

I still say try a new power supply.

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lancer

its clearly not a software issue at all, as you formatted the drive.

I would suspect the memory is faulty of the psu. If she has multiple sticks of memory, take one out and leave it on until it reboots or not, depending on how long you usually have until it auto-reboots, next try the next stick, you'll figure it out which stick is faulty, if neither make a difference, its more than likely the psu.

ifs its an emachine its the psu for sure.

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LeeJend

Since there is no BSOD it is NOT:
RAM, HD, video, sound, NIC, mouse, keyboard, etc. These all cause software exceptions that windows can handle.

That leaves CPU, MB (voltage regulator or the chipset), PSU.
To rule out overheat set the BIOS alarm to trgigger at 60 deg C or run a burn in with Sandra and the temperature monitor up.
After ruling out heat there is really no way to tell without swapping each part out, one at a time.

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Android412

twice after a reboot and submitting the error log in windows it came back saying it was a problem with the RAM. I already swapped the 1 stick out (no change) and ran memtest on it, it was fine.

I swapped the PS, seemed to make it worse, might have been my imagination.

After the last reboot and submitting the error log windows said it was something to do with the BIOS and CPU not agreeing on the clock speed or something. I checked all the settings in the BIOS, even tried pulling the battery. No luck.

Think It could only be the MB, so I'm going to talk to her tomorrow to see if she wants to start buying parts, or scrap it, being that it's starting to show its age.

Android412

If anybody wanted to know, it was the MB. Swapped it out, everything's all good.

Thanks again for everyone's help