Random Reboots... need expert advice

P

Palliser

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 26, 2002
Messages
207
Hello all -

So my computer decided (shortly after sp2 update and wireless card install) that it wants to reboot randomly. This has been happening for about a month. Guess I finally got sick of it when it started messing up my online gaming.

I had my barton 2500 oc'ed to a very nice and stable 2800. The reboots happen once every hour or so... but not always. I was resurrecting starcraft with my roommate and have had to start 5 games over! Not that I'm stressing about that... but anyways... :D

I took the overclock down to stock and the processor runs at about 120 - 125 degrees (F).
Anyways... here's what I have.

Antec 350w true
Nforce2pro
AMD Barton w /333mhz
2 X 512 Corsair pc3200
Maxtor 60gig 7200
WD 40gig 7200
4200 ti
dvd player... cdrw
wireless card


Something interesting is that everyonce in a while when I boot up I get a critical error due to a hardware configuration. I'm guessing my wireless card...

Anyways, I dont really know whats going on. All I know is that once I installed the wireless card and installed the sp2 upgrade stuff has been wierd. I don't think it is heat because I can play doom 3 for hours... it has to be hardware something else.... or does it?

What are the stock settings for an AMD Barton 333mhzbus? Maybe I have it set wrong? Don't know how that can be. I haven't overclocked the fsb too much either.

Currently it is at 322mhz fsb..the system clock is 161mhz with a 11.5 multiplier (1856mhz)

Any help / comments / suggestion are appreciated. Thanks so much for all the help ahead of time!

~ Pal
 
Have you taken a look in the event viewer? To see what is actually faulting at the time of a reboot. I was getting random reboots one time because of a memory setting I set in the BIOS that zone alarm did not like.
 
i would say check the following things in order:

(1) event viewer as banjo sez
(2) wireless card
(3) memory
(4) psu

and that cpu should be at 333mhz fsb and multiplier should be adjusted for a 1.83ghz speed.
 
For Windows XP go

Start, control panel, administrative tools, event viewer

From there you should see a few log records take a look at those for errors, the log tracks date and time the error happened.

So when you get a reboot, look at the clock then go to event viewer and see if anything got reported at that time.
 
i think all of you have missed the point...completely...usually reboots happen in the event of a stop error...if you see the stop error you might be able to solve the problem much easier..

start>settings>control Panel>Advanced:startup and recovery>Settings:system failure>and DEselect "automatically reboot"

then instead of just rebooting, you should see a blue screen..this should give you a number or some alphanumric thing...

like 0x000000D1 or like 0x0000008E or something...which woudl help you solve the problem
 
You guys are awesome, thanks for the help. I did want to clarify one thing. My computer doesn't actually go into the shutdown mode.... It just flat out restarts. Like I was hitting the reset button.

I did end up playing for a while last night on my lan with a buddy... and it didn't restart at all. I did bring the processor down to stock speeds. Isn't 125 (f) a little hot for that barton? I have the stock hsf. Maybe its heat? The ps is only about 7 months old.

~Pal
 
Allrighty... so it rebooted again and I checked the event viewer and there were several things, but this one was the most interesting. I sent it to the support center and this is what came up:

Details
Product: Windows Operating System
ID: 1001
Source: Save Dump
Version: 5.2
Symbolic Name: EVENT_BUGCHECK_SAVED
Message: The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: %1. A dump was saved in: %2.

Explanation
The computer has restarted from a bugcheck. The event log contains details about the cause of the bugcheck.

User Action
If an error report was generated for this error, you might be able to obtain more information about the error by sending the report to Microsoft for analysis.


Sooo... I went into the folder under 'minidump' and there were several files there (.dmp) files. Maybe this is information from each reboot?
 
well, as i said earlier, its a stop error. those mini dump files are produced everytime a stop error occurs if it is set that way ( and it obviously is)...usually analyzing dump files are for the more astute troubleshooters. it involves downloading the debuging pack from the microsoft website, and through a few commands (i dont know much about it), extract more info s

again. go to the control panel>system>advanced>startup and recovery>settings> then under system failure, deselect automatically reboot...this will allow the blue screen to stay in view when it happens.
 
Thank you for your time. So if I decided how to figure out what is causing them I can download the decoder. Is that in c++ ... or does it have a gui?

This is what shows in the event viewer:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x1000008e (0xc0000005, 0x804df224, 0xb87f5cf0, 0x00000000). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini121004-02.dmp.
 
Did you uninstall *ALL* of your drivers before installing SP2? If you did not, that is your own fault. The SP2 installation ethnics is to uninstall all drivers and to install SP2 then re-install the latest drivers for SP2 all over again. This will ensure smoothness of the whole operation. Otherwise, errors like your issues will happen, inevitably.

-J.
 
those codes are hexadecimal- memory addresses.

you've got a memory problem somewhere. either a soft conflict or a hardware problem that memtest didn't catch.
 
No I didn't uninstall all of my drivers before the sp2 install. My bad. Well maybe I'll just format.. then reinstall my drivers after the sp2 install. Any suggestions?

Memory - Yeah wierd. Well I'm using corsair memory... which is one of the better brands as we all know.

Thanks for your input fellas.

~Pal
 
=) I've learned my lesson from installing SP2 over SP1. Bad mistake.

-J.
 
i never heard of uninstalling drivers befoe you install SP2.. :confused:

lol.. i installed SP2 over SP1 with no problems...

I got lucky?? :confused:
 
Some people have reported no problems but sometimes there are programs that aren't compatible after you install SP2 straight on. I don't know why, don't ask me. It just sometimes gets all screwy. You're just lucky. :)

-J.
 
Yeah... well the wireless card that I got seems to be the issue. Even after I did a format and reinstalled everything it still rebooted my comptuer about an hour after the install. It was one of the cheaper ones that I found online at the egg. So I don't know. Just might go the USB 2.0 wirless route. But thanks for all the help fellas.

But come to think of it... it could always be something else, won't know till I take the card out, which I'm experimenting with right now.

~Pal
 
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