PC Keeps Rebooting

[Jewelzz]

Dunno what's going on but my PC started rebooting today, not sure how long it's up and running before it reboots but everytime I come back to do something it's rebooted. It seems to be running extremely slow when it is up and running

I scanned for virus and nothing comes up, I've run Hijackthis but from what I can tell it's clean (see attached).

Any ideas or help would be appreciated

I'm running:

1x AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+
NVIDIA GeForce 6100
Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Professional Media Center 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 2)

And according to SisSandra my temp(s) are:

Temperature Sensor(s)
Board Temperature : 18.0°C / 64.4°F
CPU1 Temperature : 36.0°C / 96.8°F
CPU2 Temperature : 21.0°C / 69.8°F

 

[gonaads]

By any chance is it connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible power supply/battery backup)?

Also look at Video Card temps.

 

[j79zlr]

Is it set to reboot on stop errors?? A very dumb default if you ask me.

 

[Tarun]

j79zlr seems to be on the correct track. Let's change that setting, shall we?

Right click My Computer and click Properties.
Next, we'll click on the Advanced tab. Under Startup and Recovery you should click the Settings button.
Under System Failure make sure that Automatically restart is unchecked.

Now, if you are having a STOP/blue screen, your machine will not restart and you will instead be able to get the STOP code from the blue screen. It should also tell you the name of the problematic file if you're having a driver conflict or other issue.

 

[Jewelzz]

Not getting BSOD but I have changed the settings j79zlr and Tarun suggested.
gonaads, no I'm not hooked up to a UPS, and I don't see where I would get the temp of the video card

 

[LeeJend]

You can try ATItool.exe It is supposed to run with Nvidia cards also. It's a speed/temp utility that is handy for diagnostics. It runs a little 3d window that will heat up a video card like it is under heavy load.

That said, if it is happening while you are away so a video bug is unlikely (the video is dormant).

Power quality is always the first suspect which is why the UPS question was asked. Are any touch lamps turning themselves on or digital clocks reseting? Take the 9V backup battery out of a digital clock and/or plug a touch lamp into the same wall plug as the computer and see if they get reset/turned on. It's a poor man's power quality detector. Also watch to see if any incandescent lamps flicker or dim occasionally. This is typical of large air conditioner loads cycling on in the summer months and could cause a marginal power supply to loose regulation.

The change in settings recommended above will keep a BSOD up so you can get some diagnostic info.

If you don't capture any BSODs the next step would be to run the sandra burn in modules one at a time (ram, cpu math, cpu memory for about 20 minutes each and watch temperatures (but yours look good) and see if a particular burn in module causes a crash.

Slow operation sounds suspicious. Check your bios settings and make sure ram, fsb, cpu clock are correct. A power spike can trash the cmos memory and put invalid settings in. Also, try an online malware scanner as a back up to see if your AV is missing anything.

 

[gonaads]

Not getting BSOD but I have changed the settings j79zlr and Tarun suggested.
gonaads, no I'm not hooked up to a UPS, and I don't see where I would get the temp of the video card

Well if you have newest or newish Nvidia drivers for your card you should have the fancy new NVIDIA Control Panel. Soooo...

Right click anywhere on desktop and then go into properties. The display properties window will open up. Click the settings tab and then the Advanced button (lower right).

The top of the next window that opens up will have tabs at the top. One will have your video card listed on it. Click on it. Another window will open (Yeah yeah a bunch of windows 😛). Now this window should have a button in the center that says, "Start the NVIDIA Control Panel". Click on it and the control panel will open (not the windows control panel but the NVIDIA one).

Now that I think of it, you should have and icon in the tray for this control panel. You can open it there and bypass all this other shiit. 😀

If not, then once the NVIDIA panel is opened the long draw out way, you will see something like the first attachment.

First click the View tab at the top and click on the Advanced setting. Now click on the big 3D settings button. Then click on "Monitor Temperature Levels" under "Performance".

You should see the same as attachment 2.

 

[ray_gillespie]

Sounds like possibly a bad CPU or motherboard to me - the slow-down might also indicate that it's the CPU.

I don't suppose you have any spare components you can try?

Failing that, download and run SiSoft Sandra Lite and let us know what the full report says.

 

[gonaads]

Bad memory can also cause slow downs and reboots.

 

[ray_gillespie]

yeah if it's bad memory you could quite easily check that out - download and run Memtest 86.

Leave that running overnight and let us know if you get any errors.

 

[Jewelzz]

Thanks for the info and suggestions. No reboot since I posted the original message. I have no lights, digital clocks or any other electrical components near the PC. I did however turn on a small fan (after if started rebooting) and have it directly blowing on the rear of the box just in case it's heat. My computer room does tend to get a bit warm in the summer *shrug*

The house has central air, if it were causing spikes I would have noticed as I was home all day. I'm off today as well and will keep an eye on things.

 

[Jewelzz]

Of course after I posted I got the BSOD 🙁

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EUQAL
STOP 0x000000D1 (0x00000019, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xF72237D5)
NDIS-SYS-ADDRESS F72237D5 base at F7200000, datestamp 41107ec3

means diddly to me and MS doesn't tell ya much. No new hardware or software has been installed

 

[j79zlr]

NDIS is related to your networking card. Two things you can try. Update the driver for your network card and if it is a PCI card instead of integrated, try moving it to a different PCI slot.

 

[Jewelzz]

I have no idea what type of NIC card I have but I'll see if I can find out


[edit]
From SisSandra:


WinSock Library
Version : 2.02
Description : WinSock 2.0
Status : Running

Host
Name : Biatch
IP Gateway/Forwarder : No
DNS Service Enabled : No
ARP Proxy Enabled : No
IP TLL Value : 128

Network Adapter 1
Model : MS TCP Loopback interface
Type : loopback
Speed : 10Mbps
Packet MTU : 1.5kB
Operational : Yes

Network Adapter 2
Model : NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller - Packet Scheduler Miniport
Type : ethernet-csmacd
Speed : 100Mbps
Packet MTU : 1.5kB
DHCP Enabled : No
WINS Enabled : No
DNS Server 1 : 209.55.0.110
Auto Configuration Enabled : Yes
Auto Configuration Engaged : No
Operational : Yes
[/edit]

 

[Dublex]

Have you tried looking at the Event Logs to see if there are any noteworthy messages there?

 

[gonaads]

Of course after I posted I got the BSOD 🙁

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EUQAL
STOP 0x000000D1 (0x00000019, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xF72237D5)
NDIS-SYS-ADDRESS F72237D5 base at F7200000, datestamp 41107ec3

means diddly to me and MS doesn't tell ya much. No new hardware or software has been installed

Found these, but I don't know if they can help.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293077

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817789

Now if I remember correctly, when Windows crashes with blue screen, it writes a system event 1001 and a minidump to the folder \windows\minidump

Check system event 1001 as it has the content of the blue screen

Control Panel --> Adminstrative Tools --> Event Viewer --> System --> Event 1001. Copy the contents and paste it here. Maybe someone can decipher it.

Oh and you will probably need microsoft windbg to open it, otherwise it looks like a big jumble of shiit in Notepad or MS Word.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/installx86.mspx

 

[Jewelzz]

I've tried getting into the Event Viewer but it's all garbled, what program should it open in?

 

[gonaads]

Taken from Microsoft site (middle of page). http://support.microsoft.com/kb/892277

Checking out the dump file
1. Start WinDbg.
2. On the File menu, click Open Crash Dump to open the dump file. (Don't click the Open button on the toolbar.)
3. Browse to the C:\Crashdump folder. In that folder, you will see another folder with a long name that starts with Crash_Mode_Date. Adplus saved the dump files inside of this folder. (You should have more than one dump file in the folder.) The dump file that you want to open in WinDbg is the 2nd chance exception dump file. It should be obvious by the name of the file which dump file is the 2nd chance exception dump file.
After you've opened the dump file, WinDbg will start downloading symbols. Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, this process may take several minutes. When it's complete, you will see the command prompt appear in WinDbg, as shown in the following figure.

Just using this for the visual "how to".

 

[gonaads]

I've tried getting into the Event Viewer but it's all garbled, what program should it open in?

The event viewer itself is garbled? Or the dump file? Or what, exactly?

 

[Jewelzz]

3. Browse to the C:\Crashdump folder.

I don't see a Crashdump folder :s