WinXP Spontaniously Reboots

[WesAZ]

Any help is greatly appriecated.

Here it goes, about a month ago my Windows XP system started rebooting on its own, no matter what I am doing or where I am at in the system. I can be online, using any program offline, in sleep mode or even booting up the computer and it will constently reboot. Here are my specs.
IBM Clone that I built almost two years ago.
MB: Abit BE6II Ver1.2
CPU: Intel PIII 750MHz Coppermine
Centronics PC100 non ECC SDRAM 2x64MB and 1x128MB
Voodoo 3000 AGP 16B Graphics Accelerator
Linksys 10/100 NIC
SB PCI 512 Sound Card
SIIG SCSI 2
Actiontec 56K ISA Fax/Modem
Actiontec IEEE1394 Firewire
Maxtor 30GB 7200RPM HD
56X CDROM
Yamaha CDRW 2100EZ
Windows XP Home

I have looked at the event viewer and Im getting ACPI errors so I upgrade the BIOS on the ABIT MB to the most recent version. Did not fix the issue.
I have FDisk and reinstalled WinXP from scratch.
I have replaced the power supply. The original one from when the case was new was an Antec 250 Watt unit which has worked in this system with all of this hardware since it eas new. I have replaced it with a brand new 250 Watt power supply.

Any suggestions would be helpful. I do not want to buy every peice of hardware again to try and fix this issue.

 

[paparazi]

You are probably in for a long hall, I think you will have to go to bare hardware essentials, remove everything and build it up one hardware component at a time to pinpoint the problem.
I have seen random reboots caused by so many differant thigs over the years, memory, CDrom, weak PSU, lan card you name it! even software conflict although you have clean installed. Martin
Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[linney]

To get further information about the error look in your Event viewer.

Look in the System or Application folder. You can get to the Event Viewer via right click My Computer icon and select Manage.

Any errors logged in the Event Viewer can be expanded by double clicking on the error line.

Take any event error I.D. number and search for it on this site.

http://www.eventid.net/events.asp

Also check any "Information" line that mentions "savedump" and you should find reference to "recovered from a bug check". This is the Stop Error that caused your problem.

This site has mention of Non Paged and MMPool type errors as well as numerous others

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ddtools/hh/ddtools/bccodes_3e07.asp

You can also turn off "automatically restart after an error" so it will just halt at the fault and display the full Stop Error and blue screen.

Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties .
On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery .
Click to clear the Automatically restart check box under System failure , and then click OK . The error message on a blue screen should remain on the screen so you can record the error information.

 

[sykotik]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's hardware related. Given my experiences doin tech support, it's probably a weak PSU(Power Supply) Just swap it w/another equal or higher output PSU and see if the problem is resolved. If not, leave in the temp. PSU and move on to RAM, then CPU, etc.
I'm sure you'll find it to be one of those components. Generally, software won't cause this(NOTE USE OF THE WORD GENERALY) but it's certainly not unheard of. James P. Grant III
A+ Certified Technician

 

[WesAZ]

The power supply was replaced with an equally wattage unit.
The event ID's that where showing in the event viewer where event 4 and 5 for ACPI. All info on this from MS knowledge base is to update the system BIOS which I have done. I have even disabled the ACPI in the BIOS and reinstalled Windows again still did not fix this issue. I will try today to pull all memory chips and try one chip at a time since this still appears to be with a memory block address. The reboots usually happen when windows is loading or it is already loaded and you are just trying to use it. Also I do want to mention that I have even turned off the automatically reboot on an error which it stll reboots with no blue screen. I am sure it is hardware but it is just so frustrating not knowning exactly which peice of hardware. Like I said I do not want to buy enough parts to completely build another pc at this time.

 

[linney]

Were you able to locate the actual Stop Error using this bit of information from my previous post?

"Also check any "Information" line that mentions "savedump" and you should find reference to "recovered from a bug check". This is the Stop Error that caused your problem."

 

[WesAZ]

Thanks Linney but it has not been given any save dump error messages. I have tried running each memory module by itself still didn't work. I am truly starting to believe that it is my hard drive. Part of the reason why there is no save dump files is because if the computer sets off for a while and then you go to turn it on it starts to load windows and then it will reboot and then it will come up with the windows log in screen where i can choose safe mode, safe mode with networking, last known good configuration, or start windows normally. and then no matter what option I choose when it starts to load it does this again for several minutes then sooner or later it will boot into windows and run in there for a little while then start rebooting again. I have tried an older and a lot smaller hard drive and it doesn't give the problem of booting up yet after setting for a while. But I am still looking for all causes to make sure I correct it.

 

[NigelR]

Just a possibility but I had a machine doing the same last year and eventually narrowed it down to a faulty keyboard which had a 'power off' switch on it.
Just my 2p worth.

 

[useless66]

WesAZ,

Mine was doing that about a 3 months ago , I finnally tracked it down to Zonealarm. You didn't mention if you had it installed so this is just a shot in the dark.

Useless66

 

[mlack]

Isn't this funny? I am having the same problem. This is a K62-500 with a brand new format 40 GB harddrive and minimal programs installed. Funny thing is, the only thing that I see in your config that matches mine would be the Voodoo 3K. This has happened to me before and I downloaded the Voodoo 3K XP Driver from the 3dfx website and it seemed to rectify the situation, although not totally. That is where I'm going to start..

 

[WesAZ]

Thanks for all the help.
To answer some of your questions. No firewalls installed except for the defualt built in XP firewall. My keyboard is old but still good it is an older MS Erogonomic from MS that does not have any shortcut buttons such as power, email, or web. The video card has not been ruled out that is my next thing to try after trying another hard drive I have borrowed a 2.1 GB hard drive and will see if this has the same issue if so then I am going to pull every card out of the computer but video and make sure that none of my perhipral cards is the culprit if not then that leaves me with MB, Video, and or Processor.

 

[mlack]

Just to let you know, from my previous post..I would START with the Video card. Replaced driver with a 3rd party driver for Voodoo that supports XP. My computer hasn't crashed for 2 hours now.... a record.

Here is the site for the driver

http://www.voodoofiles.com/8555

Hope this helps!

 

[WesAZ]

Thanks I will try that tonight

 

[WesAZ]

Still did not work tried those drivers and still same problem. I guess I am down to pulling ut all cards except video and see if the problem still exist.

 

[CrazyNexus]

I had this problem with a dual processor board. took me about a year to figure out what was causing windows 2000 or windows XP to spontaniously reboot. Check your RAM sticks. I pulled out 2x 128 sticks that were originally put into it the spring of 2000, and left the 2x 256 sticks I had in there from crucial. Hasn't rebooted in about 5 months unless I tell it too.

if possible, try checking any older RAM by pulling the sticks out and seeing what happens.

 

[webtoole]

Hello,
I have had the same problem in the past with the computer randomly rebooting. This has happened on several different platforms running Windows XP. The main causes for this that I have noticed are below. One of the causes is if the motherboard or BIOS has CPU overheating protection. You can usually set these parameters. You might have the shutdown temp set to low, or you might not have a big enough cooling fan. If this is not the problem I have also had XP reboot randomly if I was running dual RAM cards. I actually had a Microsoft Tech. tell me that XP doesn't like running on multiple RAM cards and if you do they have to be exactly alike. I was running a ABIT KR7A-RAID with 512 MB of DDR. It kept rebooting. I pulled one of the 256 DDR chips and instantly no more rebooting problems. I had to get a single 512 MB DDR chip and it fixed the problem. The last petential fix is to make sure that the wall socket that the computer is plugged into is properly grounded. I had a client who's computer would go on the fritz or randomly shutdown / reboot all of the time and when I would take it to my house to try and fix it it would appear to run fine. I finally hooked a Meter to her wall outlet. It was spiking and getting all sorts of surgesa and drops in the current. I had her call a qualified electrician out. He grounded all outlets and installed a dedicated line just for the computer. Since this was done my client has not had a single problem with her computer. The random rebooting drove me carazy. I tried pulling all of the cards but found it to be unecessary. Try pulling out all of the RAM but one card, checking the overheating shut down settings either in the motherboards included monitoring software,and making sure that your computer is plugged into a good solid outlet with a good surge protector. Even a good surge protector will not stop the voltage fluctuations from affecting your computer if the current going into it has problems.

 

[webtoole]

One more thing. I read your computer specs. Pull out all of the RAM but just one card. I would suggest moving your 128 MB card to slot one and removing the 2 64 MB cards for now. I will almost guarantee this will fix your random rebooting problem.

 

[Trebax]

Hi

I had a similar problem and I found it out to be because I was running two P2P software programmes at the same time. For some reason running these two programmes caused my computer to shutdown and reboot.

So if your doing any file sharing at the time it happens it may be something to do with that.

Just a thought.

Good luck

 

[idanraz]

I disabled the option to restart the computer by windows.
Goto My computer - properties- advanced-startup and ... and uncheck automatically restart.

 

[WesAZ]

Thanks for all the info. The problem was not the ram I did try each chip independently and still problem. It was not a software issue either since it will not even install Windows or Linux now. The problem I have found was my cpu is going out. I tried a P3 600 that I borrowed and it loaded Linux and Windows just fine and no reboots. Will have to buy a new processor.