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Uncommanded Reboot

B

BB Gun

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 14, 2004
Messages
1,551
OK, could a bad disk or system file cause a dependable instant reboot? I.E. it WILL reboot as soon as you log in, after a short, but not identical, period of time.

My son logged off, after a long session of movie editing with no issues. My daughter logged on and it rebooted. She logged on again and it rebooted again.

So I opened it up, and blew out the dust, and restarted. It remains stable for some time (no reboots for a period of 5-10 minutes) and tried logging in. I get logged in, but a VERY short time later, BLAM, reboot. No warning - almost like someone jiggled the power chord. The disk started showing some errors, so I thought that might be it? I put the drive in my other system, and pulled the critical data off it, and ran a chkdsk which found and fixed some errors. Then I put it back in the original system, and BLAM, reboot upon login. Oh, it reboots in safe mode, too.

The PSU is only 6 months old, an Enermax EG365-VP 350 Watt PSU. Not top of the line, but not crap, either.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Albatron PX845PEV Pro
PIV 1.8A running at stock speed.
256 MB PC2100, 256 MB PC2700
WD 80 GB JB HD
WinXPO Pro, all patched up
Radeon8500, latest drivers

BB
 
Thanks for the replys, guys.

Also found this thread - http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=760326 and at least I'm not alone.

Will do the memory check thing tonight. And check the caps on the Mobo.

Pain in the ass though, the Albatron is one of those motherboards where you have to remove the vid card to add or remove RAM. :(

BB
 
BB Gun said:
And check the caps on the Mobo.
Click to expand...

Damn thats some vintage stuff :eek:
My Abit KR7A is still going strong and dates to the same period
thought Id seen the last of the "check the caps" issue :p
 
Ice Czar said:
Damn thats some vintage stuff :eek:
My Abit KR7A is still going strong and dates to the same period
thought Id seen the last of the "check the caps" issue :p
Click to expand...

No way. With the XP-Ms, there is a breath of frest air in that line. Those 133 boards will be around for another year *at least*. Heck you can hit 2ghz on something that old, I'm in that boat now, just don't have a board with common, leaky cap issues. Isn't the average video something around a GF3 (obviously not around here ;) ).
 
Ya know, thinking on it...

I just put that additional 256 MB of PC2700 RAM in there a couple months ago, and shortly (approx 2 weeks) thereafter, the system had to go through a "chkdsk" on startup after some wierd system behavior. The chkdsk found a couple things, fixed them, and I ended up having to replace a corrupted system file. Once I did, everything has hunky dory until now. I didn't connect it to the RAM. Now, I'm getting this problem - and with everyone's suggestions combined with that experience, I'm thinking and really hoping that just taking out that stick of RAM takes care of the problem.

BB
 
Couple of things, you really need to test that memory. Run memtest86 on it for several hours, if you suspect a single stick test it first. Generally I say test the machine as is, then each stick, but in your case, skip the BS and go for what you suspect.

If the memory test bad remember, it doesn't mean that stick is bad. It's likely that the stick is bad, but not definate. It could be the slot on the mobo, the memory controllers on the mobo, the CPU, or possible power. Additional testing would be needed.

As far as just removing the chip and working from there, that's iffy. If it's already corrupted system data on the HDD, that data needs to be reloaded. Removing the bad memory won't fix that. Worse case, you need to replace the RAM, and format the HDD, just depends, again more testing.
 
Also be sure to make sure its not the video drivers causing this problem, my machine used to do a similar thing and the cause I found was video drivers. Make sure you use drivercleaner's utility and get the newest driver.
 
Its not the video drivers - it happens in safe mode, too.

Ran the Memtest86+ with both chips in. 1% pass, and 90% failure in first test alone.

Pulled the Mushkin Basic Green out of the system (mem slot 2) and so far with the first four tests completed - no errors.

Will experiment with slots and chips to see if its the slot or the stick, but I suspect the stick.

Will keep you up to date.

Thanks for the help, guys.

BB
 
RMA the RAM. Funny how it didn't do anything for ages, and then started doing it again...
 
okay, well if you had a 90% failure on that stick then there is your problem. Does that RAM have a lifetime warrenty?
 
Pulled the kingston out, put the mushkin back in the same slot as the Kingston - ERROR ERROR ERROR!

Put the kingston back in, no errors, system boots and is stable on 256.

Am RMA'ing the RAM back to Newegg.

Thanks again guys!

BB
 
good to hear ya got it worked out... Mushkin is normally very high quality RAM, you've gotten the only bad stick I've encountered.
 
4keatimj said:
RMA the RAM. Funny how it didn't do anything for ages, and then started doing it again...
Click to expand...

actually its not that mysterious
a Latent Defect being far more common than a catastrophic failure at that late stage

regarding exactly where it happened, manufacturing, packaging, integration or power event in the mobo
is another matter
 
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