Computer randomly restarting.

[alphonsus]

My computer recently started restarting itself. Not often, but maybe once or 2x every few hours. This has been a problem for me in the past and I though I got rid of it by uping my vcore voltage from 1.6 to 1.8. It didnt restart itself for a while, but now its coming back. I dont know what the problem is; is there a windows log that I can check to see what error caused the shutdown of the computer? What would cause my computer to act up this way?
al

 

[Pistolero]

What are you doing when it crashes?
What hardware are you using?
please include your video card, motherboard, memory, powersupply, and any other useful info.

As far as logging I think you need to enable that before it does anything, but I'm not sure. I will look into that

 

[Corporate Thug]

what PSU are you using?

 

[Agamar]

Make sure you aren't infected with the blaster worm

 

[tad214]

check power supply, and battery on the board.
DALE

 

[sirspotticus]

ya, it's the blaster worm.. you're gonna need to go out and buy a new computer now

 

[Darvil]

Did you overclocked your computer system?

 

[Atlantean]

Power supply? System Temperature?

 

[Slammy1]

Actually, the problem as described is very indicative of a failing CPU. Upping the voltages solved the problem, but over time worsened the condition. Try underclocking your CPU to see if the problem goes away, and if it's an HT unit turn off HT. If either of those significantly reduces the restarts, then a new CPU would be a good start to solving the problem. Further complicating it is that the restarts can lead to file corruption, which also causes random restarts.

To check for the blaster virus, run msconfig and look for the startup program "mblaster". If it's there, disable it. Also, search the HD and registry for the phrase "mblaster" and delete the file/registry entry.

 

[alphonsus]

It's not an Mblaster virus . Too bad because that would be much easier to fix. Well my system specs are:
asus a7n8x motherboard
AMD 2200+ Processor
Antec performance 380W PS.
I have a few video cards on my desk, the main one I used was the Geforce ti4200, I cleaned the fan with some dustoff and took it off cleaned the thermal compound and placed antec silver 3 on there, still didnt fix the problem. I am trying the other video cards out as we speak to see if that takes care of it, but it has already turned off once on me.

My old system had the same exact probs, but then I upgraded; I changed everything but the hard drive and cd-rom/cd-rw.

I don't think it's my comp temp, but it sure does seem to turn off when I'm using a lot of rescources. Usually my comp stays ~43 idle, I know thats hot but I have the Vantec Aeroflow on it, and it doesnt seem to work as well as others stated. Underfull load its ~52 which still isn't bad, but could be cooler.

Do you think its possible its the CPU? I bough the retail AMD processor, does anyone know whats the warranty on those are? It may be why my computer runs so hot on idle, because the heatsink and fan are supost to cool down great but isn't so on my computer.
I hope this long post dont scare you guys away.
Thanks
AL

 

[alphonsus]

I installed different video cards, sometime something will pop on the screen sometimes just sit there blank. When it does work, right after I hit the windows logon screen, the computer will automatically restart. So I'm thinking it's a video issue. The PCI video card did not boot up, the AGP ones restarted the computer. ARGGG! Maybe a motherboard issue? Does anyone know how I can turn on the windows error reporting so I can see the cause of the shutdown?

 

[Slammy1]

If you're running XP it's in administrative tools in control panel. I'd recommend turning off the reboot on error option, and the reporting is on by default so you shouldn't need to turn it on (look for the event viewer in administrative tools). While you're in there, you might want to turn off system restore and reboot on error, see if that takes care of anything. It is hard to tell the difference between GPU errors and CPU errors, they both have similar effect. I don't know about AMD, but with Intel it's really difficult to get an RMA for a CPU. I know on a similar thread on another board, they basically wanted you to try another CPU to see if it fixed the problem before giving RMAs.

The things you want to check are memory (memtest extended tests), Prime95 (won't tell you if the CPU is bad per se, just if you're stable at a given clock), see if you have problems with 3dMark03, and a minimum install (remove all of the cards and install, then install back 1 at a time to see what's causing the problem). I'd say, given the information you've provided, that the CPU is the culprit although memory, file corruption, bad components (card), video, and PSU can also cause random restarts.