Any ideas what my be causing pc to reboot itself ?

[TBPFL]

I have a PIII 866 Slot 1 pc that's about a year old that is rebooting itself. I have changed the AGP video card and I have put new memory in but same problem. I am planning to replace the ATX power supply with a spare to see if this fixes. Other than the Abit Mb might have gone bad, does anyone have a suggestion?

 

[DBSSP]

Swap out he PSU. If it's still doing it, look at the possibility of a faulty power switch (try tapping around the switch lightly with the PC off), also look into your BIOS settings. Jay
"If the words up and down were reversed, would you trip and fall or trip and fly?"

 

[RSeymour]

When it reboots does it go all the way back to the BIOS as if you have just switched it on or does it just reboot the OS? If it is going back to the BIOS you have definitely got a hardware problem but if it's just the OS then start looking at drivers and dodgy software.

 

[cdogg]

Possible Causes:

1) Failing hard drive
2) Weak Power Supply
3) Dying Power Supply
4) Faulty Memory
5) OS corruption

...just about anything! I would first start from the bottom and work your way up from the cheapest solution to the most expensive.

So, first image your HD & try to do a clean install of the OS to see if the problem reoccurs. If so, skip to the power supply since you've already replaced the memory. Last resort would be the hard drive...
~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[TBPFL]

It's booting up to Windows 98 which I reinstalled last night when it first started happening. I just tried the replacing of ATX pwr supply with no change. Since it's a clean install with a different AGP video card/drivers and new memory, I am leaning towards the Mb. The only thing that is the same as before is the Mb, Case, and Nic. Has anyone seen a NIC cause such a problem? I did change PCI slots when I reinstalled OS.

 

[cdogg]

Without hesitation, you should uninstall any PCI devices from Windows and remove the hardware from the system. Just run the base components needed to boot to Windows - that way you don't have too many variables to rule out...
~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[denodave]

I had an E-machines unit that demonstrated similar problems that you are having. As so many people are quick to suggest (which by the way is NOT always the first thing to do), we tried switching power supplies (which did no good). After spending hours and hours trying to resolve this an electrical engineer friend of mine helped me to narrow the problem down to this: the logic gates in the BIOS chip were likely permanently damaged due to power fluctuations. This made sense due to the inconsistent nature of the problem, that the BIOS controls the power functions, and the fact that the BIOS screen would come up frequently during power-ups. This is something that MAY be resolved by way of a BIOS replacement, but in my experience it is symptomatic of a larger m-board problem. There is a great source for BIOS chips at

http://www.biosworld.com

I agree with the idea of removing all pci cards. One machine of mine had this one pci slot that prevented the machine from shutting down because of an incompatibiltiy with the NIC that was in it. Actually the problem was that the wake-up cable was plugged into the NIC and not the mboard. Once I pulled the card, removed the loose cable and changed slots everything was OK. Email me! denodave@yahoo.com
Real men pray...especially techies!