OMG im sick of these damn random restarts!!!!!!

[Lionheart1827]

ok, ever since the beginning of august ive been getting random restarts. recently, i took out my sblive card just for the hell of it, and it SEEMED like it wouldnt restart anymore-until yesterday. it seems like taking out the sblive card makes it more stable, but not completely stable, kinda like it prolongs the restart. with the sblive card in, the only time it was completely stable was when I was playing games, like UT2k3/4, SOF2, and others. but with it in, even not doing anything on the computer would make it restart for no reason, and these are WITHOUT blue screens(i took off the auto-restart feature under power options). its too hard to reproduce because the restarts are so random(with the sblive in), it could happen within 5 minutes, or sometimes in a half hour. its like it cant handle basic operations. is my power supply the culprit?-even though games run fine? i did memtest for a whole day and everything checked out and i know its not my temps, they are way below the danger level. i dont know what else to do. here are my specs by the way:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Aopen AK-86L mobo
512mb geil ram
msi radeon 9800 pro
120gig seagate barracuda
sblive(not taken out)
cd-rw drive
thermaltake 480watt silent purepower
3 case fans

it seems like i can do all operations without any problem, but after around 45min- hour itll restart on me. before i took the sblive card out, i was getting restarts even when hardly doing anything. what do you guys recommend i do?

 

[everman]

If it only happened with the sblive installed I'd say the drivers are suspect.
But since it sounds like that's not the case, Have you tried things like Prime95 torture test? You can also try memtest. Try that and keep track of cpu temps along the way. It sounds like a heat issue to me,but maybe not.

 

[x2ThorsHammer2x]

well it MIGHT be the PSU but it seems like 480 should be more than enough. and if you said your temps are fine that rules out overheat. which leads me to believe that you might need to update you bios. i had the EXACT same problem that you are having. my temps were fine and everthing too. the fact that you mention about taking that card out could be it. flashing the bios will update incompatibilities with other hardware which it sounds like you have. i would flash the bios as a last resort. that is pretty much the only thing that i am still afraid to do on a computer. good luck.

 

[mechBgon]

Hmms...

1. What voltage are you running the RAM at
2. Are you using Cool 'n Quiet? if so, tried disabling it?
3. Is the PSU definitely set to 115V input on the rear?
4. If you do a Start > Run > dxdiag does it show anything amiss?
5. If you look in Event Viewer, do you see any events that correspond to the times of the restarts?
6. You might try disabling Automatic Restart on errors (right-click My Computer, go to Properties, go to the Advanced tab, go to Startup & Recovery)
7. Is the system known to be free of viruses, trojans, worms, snakes, gerbils and spyware/adware?
8. What OS exactly, WinXP Professional SP2 or what? It's a legit Microsoft CD you used?
9. Are you running a file-sharing program?
10. Do you have a firewall, or more than one?

*brain is empty*

 

[Lionheart1827]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Hmms...

1. What voltage are you running the RAM at
2. Are you using Cool 'n Quiet? if so, tried disabling it?
3. Is the PSU definitely set to 115V input on the rear?
4. If you do a Start > Run > dxdiag does it show anything amiss?
5. If you look in Event Viewer, do you see any events that correspond to the times of the restarts?
6. You might try disabling Automatic Restart on errors (right-click My Computer, go to Properties, go to the Advanced tab, go to Startup & Recovery)
7. Is the system known to be free of viruses, trojans, worms, snakes, gerbils and spyware/adware?
8. What OS exactly, WinXP Professional SP2 or what? It's a legit Microsoft CD you used?
9. Are you running a file-sharing program?
10. Do you have a firewall, or more than one?

*brain is empty*

1)not sure, but I tried adjusting the timings and no luck
2)it was off when i booted the pc for the first time, enabled it and still got errors
3)yup
4)everytrhing is fine-cept for ati2dvag.dll is not digitally signed, meaning it hasnt been tested by microsofts WHQL or something. i havent been able to get around this, i dont think its the problem though. whenever i updated the drivers or even tried installing the current drivers with my radeon 9800 pro, it said that it wasnt signed by microsoft so theres not really anyway around that.
5)there are errors, but they are never near where the restarts are, and its usually a stupid error, like windows media player crashing-happens rarely though.
6)disabled it already
7)when i first booted my computer after building it, i didnt have it connected in ANY way to the internet for that very reason. i even ordered the microsoft free update cd, copied my firewall software from my discs and installed it, got the rest of my updates and then ran spybot and ad-aware and nothing came up. it first started restarting when i was transferring my files from my old computer from a cd, at first i thought it was my cd drive, but its not. i tried disconnecting that and it still restarted.
8)WinXP home SP1 with all updates-legit cd
9)no
10)i have the hardware firewall on my router and zonealarm.

by the way, i even tried disconnecting my cable connection to see if it was my router that was causing the restarts, but it still did it anyway. so i know for a fact its not the internet connection either. this is making me really mad, i really need this computer for college and i cant have it be so unreliable like this.

oh yeah and flashing the BIOS was one of the first things i did when trying to diagnose this problem, its currently at its newest version

 

[mechBgon]

Next thing I'd try is cranking that memory voltage right on up to 2.8 volts and setting the timings a little relaxed, like 2.5-3-3-7. I wish boards would start defaulting to 2.65V or so, now that we're in the PC3200 era...

 

[n7]

My first guess is that the RAM is causing the issues.

Second would be motherboard.

Have you tried with different RAM?

See how she runs with another dimm.

 

[splice]

Since you answered yes to question 6 and it's still rebooting on it's own, you most likely have a hardware issue.

Have you tried running bare minimum hardware? (CPU, 1 stick RAM, Video card, harddrive) Disable onboard NIC and audio.

You can also try running in "safe mode" to see if it reboots on its own.

 

[Lionheart1827]

tried my friends 512 stick of ram, same issues.

question-if i get a new mobo, will i have to reinstall XP and everything over again/reformat my hard drive n stuff? i really dont want to do that, added to the fact id have to disconnect all of my stuff and rebuild the pc.

 

[Lionheart1827]

thats basically what im doing now. im running a bare minimum system basically-hardrive, cd rom is disconnected for now, onboard sound is disabled and my sblive is out, radeon 9800 pro, only have one stick of ram. and safe mode always freezes when i attempt to do ANYTHING-the weird part is the task manager works and its the only thing that works, even under the different safe mode options.

 

[Lionheart1827]

i dont know what to do now, do you think i should replace my mobo? will i have to reinstall everything, or can i just swap them out?

 

[Tiamat]

Try taking out the mobo fromt he case and running it on a cardboard box. Maybe it is shorting with the case?

 

[Lionheart1827]

i dont think thats the problem. if that was the case it would probably restart a lot more often.

 

[x2ThorsHammer2x]

if you replace your mobo with the exact same type then you shouldn't have to reinstall anything