help--random restarts

C

Carnival Forces

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 9, 2003
Messages
4,297
the problem:
my computer keeps randomly restarting, usually when i try to run something involving video (like watch a movie or play a game)


the specs:
Chaintech ZNF3-150 motherboard
Radeon 9800 PRO gpu
Athlon 64 3200+ cpu
2x512MB Corsair ram (DDR 400)
some crap Audigy sound card
a netgear wireless NIC
DiamondMax Plus 9 200GB SATA HDD (model number 6Y160M0 i think)
a cd burner
a dvd burner

what i've tried:
at first i thought it was my HDD so i bought a Seagate HDD (just some crap 5k rpm ATA 20 GB) from compUSA--no beef, restarts still occured

so i've disconnected that hard drive.

then i thought it was the video card, so i took out the 9800PRO and put in a 7000 (PCI) that i knew worked--still screwing up.

so the 9800 is back in.

i know it's not the RAM, because back when it was stable i Prime 95'd it and i passed (which means it's not the CPU either).

so, unfortunately, i think it's my good-for-shit motherboard.

however, other odd things that happen: my BIOS won't recognize my hard drive disk, i can't seem to set one disk as a master (neither the ATA, which it does recognize, nor the SATA, which it doesn't)
so IDE1 and IDE2 have one master each--the first my CD-RW and the second my DVD+/-RW (IDE2 used to have the ATA as a slave, but i took that drive out)

the only work-around i have is to let it rest from its (sometimes) infinite reset cycles and then try again. resetting the BIOS through the BIOS or on the motherboard (through the red jumper) doesn't seem to do anything constructive.

odd though, sometimes when it restarts it tells me "Resetting CPU frequency! Systme now in safe mode! Press F1 to continue DEL to enter setup"
^--i have no idea why it needs to reset my CPU's frequency since i don't overclock :(

i'm fairly certain it's not a virus (i use AVG Free) or spyware (i use Adaware and Spyblock) but, i am backing up (slowly oh so slowly) all my shit onto DVDs in the hopes of an eventual reformat.

btw, if anyone can find drivers for my hard drive (the DiamondMax Plus 9 200GB SATA 6Y160M0 thing) that would be awesome--not only have i misplaced mine, maxtor.com sucks a bunch. :(

bah, my well-being is in your hands. don't drop me.
 
Well, my first instinct is the RAM. I know you said it's ok, but it may not be now. Trying up the voltage up a notch.

And run prime95 in the blend mode to test all of your ram. I'd recommend prime95 in blend mode over memtest since it'll get your whole system hot and if your ram is overheating you'll get errors that you may not get with memtest.
 
Maybe its your asshole closing!? :D ::See his other post::

I'm betting on bad memory.
 
If your loosing the bios setting try a new battery in the mobo.

I would first check your memory with Memtest86 then test memory & cpu with Prime95 and finally add 3dMark on top of Prime to stress test your vid card as well.
That is the best combo of stress test programs you can run.

Also check your voltages and temps.
Dust the case out.
Ect, ect.

If your run WindozesXP is the auto-restart after failure switched off.
If not do so , that may give you a nice BSOD you can read to get more info on whats going wrong.

Luck...... :D
 
spine said:
Well, my first instinct is the RAM. I know you said it's ok, but it may not be now. Trying up the voltage up a notch.

And run prime95 in the blend mode to test all of your ram. I'd recommend prime95 in blend mode over memtest since it'll get your whole system hot and if your ram is overheating you'll get errors that you may not get with memtest.
Click to expand...

okay, at my dad's suggestion, i re-connected the "new" (20GB ATA Seagate) hard drive and am working off that now.

i get some interesting things--like a phantom firefox.exe process that won't close no matter what and sucks up 56k of memory

at any rate, i put that down to basic windnoes! shit

but, i ran prime95 on blend and after 1 minute i got an error:
[Sun Apr 24 12:47:11 2005]
FATAL ERROR: Resulting sum was 5355073563625808, expected: 2704003249943820
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

yikes! i guess it could be the RAM, but i still think it's the motherboard; what should i do now?
 
oddly enough, i just ran prime95 on blend again, and , stopipng it after 2 minutes, i had 0 errors 0 warnings...

:eek:

i guess i'll just leave it running and wait for another error and report back...
 
I would run Memtest before running Prime.
I've found that Memtest is better for picking up and showing memory errors.
It will tell you if you have a bad cell or if two sticks wont work together.

Once you know your memory is good then use Prime to stress the cpu.

Luck........ :D

 
Tigerbiten said:
I would run Memtest before running Prime.
I've found that Memtest is better for picking up and showing memory errors.
It will tell you if you have a bad cell or if two sticks wont work together.

Once you know your memory is good then use Prime to stress the cpu.

Luck........ :D

Click to expand...
aight, are there any special commands or syntax of commands i need to enter after booting up memtest? i remember trying to use it once and not being able to do anything... :confused:
 
Its self-booting.
Just either download it and install on a floppy then run.
Or download the iso to a bootable CD and run.
Its the first thing I run from floppy on a new system as you dont need any other drives or an operating system installed for it to work.

Once built a system useing 4 sticks of memory that kept giving me the odd random reboot.
Ran Memtest and got around 5-6 errors in test 5.
Now each stick tested ok by its self.
But all four sticks again gave me the odd error in test 5.
26 hours of testing later I found the combo that gave no errors after 3 loops.
The system was rock stable from then on.
Thats why I like Memtest.

Luck........ :D
 
Tigerbiten said:
Its self-booting.
Just either download it and install on a floppy then run.
Or download the iso to a bootable CD and run.
Its the first thing I run from floppy on a new system as you dont need any other drives or an operating system installed for it to work.

Once built a system useing 4 sticks of memory that kept giving me the odd random reboot.
Ran Memtest and got around 5-6 errors in test 5.
Now each stick tested ok by its self.
But all four sticks again gave me the odd error in test 5.
26 hours of testing later I found the combo that gave no errors after 3 loops.
The system was rock stable from then on.
Thats why I like Memtest.

Luck........ :D
Click to expand...
i downloaded the iso to burn to a CD, but after clicking "extract all" it said "No files to extract"

i tried the floppy version but i got the same error message.
wtf?
 
just downloaded a trial version of WinRAR, it works fine. yay windnoes!

okay, i'm now going to burn the *.iso to a CD and try memtest, i'll report any new findings via my linux box! wish me luck guys!
 
nyet.
nein.
non.
no.

unfortunately, after i boot up memtest (via the CD) it says:
Code: 
Boot from CD :
1. FD 1.44MB System Type- (0F)
Starting Cladera DR-DOS...

EMM386 3.27 Copyright (c) 1992, 1998 Cladera, Inc. All rights reserved

then it just sits there with the cursor blinking and i can't enter any commands--the only thing it responds to is ctrl+alt+del


the first time i did it i had my printer on, and it started printing out copies of the DMI pool! how weird is that? it just kept printing and printing and printing!
the second time i turned my printer off, so i dont' know if it still wanted to print or not...

what the hell should i do?? :confused:
 
Download the "Pre-Compiled Memtest86 v3.2" from http://www.memtest86.com/
Extract the four files from that zip.
Put a newly formatted/blank floppy in your floppy drive and then run the Install.bat program.
Point it at your floppy drive and it willinstall Memtest.
Reboot with your floppy as the first boot device and it will run.
The floppy will be unreadable by Windozes after Memtest is installed.

Luck........ :D
 
Tigerbiten said:
Download the "Pre-Compiled Memtest86 v3.2" from http://www.memtest86.com/
Extract the four files from that zip.
Put a newly formatted/blank floppy in your floppy drive and then run the Install.bat program.
Point it at your floppy drive and it willinstall Memtest.
Reboot with your floppy as the first boot device and it will run.
The floppy will be unreadable by Windozes after Memtest is installed.

Luck........ :D
Click to expand...
yokhai!
just finished installing to the floppy, gonna try that now...
 
this is the 5th time i am writing this post. i am now on my linux computer downstairs. *bah*!

at any rate, ran memtest86 from the floppy and it loaded, but it froze at 5min28s into the first pass, on test number 5 -- the pass was 34% done and the test was 54% done. nothing (ctrl+alt+del or ESC) worked so i hard restarted it (pressed the button)

tried again, i went out to blow my nose and came back to see my monitor screen turning black and saying "Power Save" (it does this sometimes--nothing will respond, you have to restart the computer--sometimes it does it for you :rolleyes: ) and then (first time this has happened) started going *beeeeep* *pause* *beeeep* *pause* etc. etc..

i didn't know what that beep code meant, and , of course, the three-finger salute and ESC had no effect, so i had to hard restart again.

tried it one more time for luck and it froze in the same place. hard restarted.

then i decided, well, memtest won't work, why don't i boot up with my old (SATA) HDD running windows instead of the new (ATA 20GB seagate) HDD running windows? well, that's why this is the 5th time i'm writing this post. computer just would keep restarting *right* when i was about to finish....

help. :mad:
 
my $.02 says either grounding issues, bad PSU, or virus

I had this problem - i formatted, upgraded my PSU, and reinstalled XP and it worked perfectly
 
I would strip it down completely, clean and rebuild it to minimum specs.
Just use MoBo, PSU, 1 stick of Memory, Vid card, CPU with heats sink & fan, Floppy.
You dont need any other parts as the idea is to keep the load on the PSU to a minimum.
It also cuts down on the number of parts that could be bad.
Now run Memtest again.

If it passes then rebuild more untill it either fails Memtest or theres no more parts to add.
If it fails then it probably one of the first five items that is dieing probably working in that order.

Luck....... :D


 
Memtest failing doesn't always mean the memory is bad, it could still be the mobo, possibly the PSU or CPU.

Do the tigerbiten's process, but make sure to test one stick at a time. If both sticks fail it's likely the board. If only one stick fails, one passes, it's likely the one stick that failed. Make sure to test for several hours at a time, some errors will not show on a couple of passes. Good luck.

 
well, i just took out both my memory sticks and put in one memory stick i *know* works and i haven't had any problems -- prime95 ran fine for 40 minutes; i oc'd (bumped my CPU up a whole 60 megahertz) and re-prime95'd for ~20 minutes, again no errors.

now i'm FAH and will do so for the rest of the night, hopefully it'll be fine.

i need this computer for now to do debate work, but this weekend i'll do what tigerbiten said. thanks guys!
 
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