Spontaneous Shut-down

[geeksRus]

I have a machine running win2k. I have swapped power supplies and mother boards(from new ASUS to new Intel). 733 PIII with 128 meg RAM. All drivers are from win2k (video, sound and printer). With both motherboards and power supplies the result is the same. The machine will run fine for a few days and then for no good reason it will simply shut down completely or reboot. I have installed drivers for a UMAX scanner. This behaviour is present whether you are scanning or not scanning. It is completely random. This is the only machine I have seen with this problem. Machine is attached to a UPS. any ideas?

 

[MasterRacker]

I experienced this as well. I don't have a scanner on my machine. I can't be certain, but don't think it's happened since I installed Service Pack 1.
Jeff
masterracker@hotmail.com

If everything seems to be going well: you don't have enough information.......

 

[MasterRacker]

I can now say that it has happened after SP1.

@%#%$%^#*#&@$^@#$%!@$E!^$%&%@^!%#$%$#^%$&^ !!!
Jeff
masterracker@hotmail.com

If everything seems to be going well: you don't have enough information.......

 

[Mystro]

service pack 1 has minimised mine but still happens a couple of times a day.

i too have an ASUS motherboard CUV4X... latest bios update.. still no joy.

damn u windows2000.

 

[theripper]

Are there any variables that are true across the board (minus the Win2k install)? What kind of machines do you all have?

I too have Win2K sp1, yet haven't seen this issue - at least not yet. Just some things I would look at: BIOS settings for power-management - on/off/conflicting with the Win2K Advanced Power settings. Event Viewer showing anything?

geeksRus - I would have suggested looking at your UPS settings. Sometimes if a spike or sag is recorded (APC) the settings can trigger a reboot or total shut down. However, sounds like it may be more than a setting or two.

 

[TeachMeC]

See Q105241 at MS KB web site. This explains that if Win2K cannot communicate with your UPS, it will assume the worst and just shut down without any warning or explanation. Very annoying and appears to be random. You can go into MMC and view the system logs to see what was going on just before it shut down too. As a remedy, try connecting your UPS with a USB rather than the serial port -- or run different UPS software.

 

[MasterRacker]

If your computer plugged into a UPS but has no software running or no communcation cable connected it would never know a power failure occured. This is my case so there is obviously at least one other reason for the shutdown.

I thought my shutdowns were fixed by SP1 but was wrong. They appear to be becomning more frequent again.

My guess is a heuristic algorithm that determines how important my current work is, immediately when a certain threshold is reached.
Jeff
masterracker@hotmail.com

If everything seems to be going well: you don't have enough information.......

 

[Jroenick]

Check your RAM, If a bad part of the RAm is accessed by a program, it could cause the RAM to dump anything running in it, causing your shutdowns or reboots.

 

[randyQ]

I think that certain system security settings will cause a shutdown as well. For instance, if a log file gets maxed out (if you put a size limit on it), then the machine shuts off to avoid writing additional info. There are other security instances that I can recall that also shut down the PC whenever a certain security trigger is tripped. You might want to check up on this as well. I'm not sure it it pertains to your situation, but it's all I can offer.

 

[Jroenick]

Very little software programs, including windows have the power to hard reboot like that. First try randys idea, it is cheap, and relatively easy. Otherwise, RAM and motherboard is where I'd look