Random Rebooting.. Think its the PSU?

[Electricview]

I posted this on another forum since random reboting can be anything.. i'll copy and paste the specifics here..

Hey guys i've recently started fighting with random restarts and a few lockups on my system.. its been error free for the past 1 year or so and in the last month or two this has started happening.. its not all the time.. i wouldn't even say its frequent.. my computer stays on alot of the time.. just doing idle thigns (download bits, sometimes overnet, and not much else)..

What happens is most of the time it just hard reset out of the blue.. almost like someone hit the reset button.. (of course this isn't happening). Its windows XP pro, and i turned off auto reboot, and i'm not getting any blue screens so i dont think its windows..

Now on a few occasions i've gotten HARD LOCKs, where the screen just freezes totally.. now this happened 3 or 4 times while using Media player 10 BETA so i could blame that.. but one time i was just listening to winamp, and maybe had an IE window or two minamized, and it just froze.. sometimes, i'll hear a slight high pitched crackle sound right as it freezes other times not..

My thought is MAYBE its the PSU?

Here's my specs

Powersupply is a 350watt LC (l&C 350BX with 28a on the +3.3v, 35 a on +5v, 16a on the +12v.. it says +3 and +5 is 200 watt
and then +3, +5, and +12 is 320 watt it says..


Soltek purple ray mobo (kt-266 chipset via)
AMD XP (thouroughbred) 2600+ 266fsb
768 megs of pc2100 ram (crucial)
Ati 9800 radeon flashed pro (uses one power supply cable)
250 gig maxtor diamond max 9 hard drive
80 gig ibm deskstar hard drive
sony dru 500 dvd burner
Soundblaster audigy platnum 2 with front panel disconnected (was
splitting off one of the power connectors but since i'm splitting most of them twice i just took this out of the loop)
side door case fan.. (splits off power cable that goes to 1 hd)
Extra rear fan (splits off another power cable that goes to the other hd)
Cold cathode light that is NEVER on but is hooked up.
Cheapo microsoft PCI network card

as for usb i have my logitech basic laser eye mouse
the other one goes up to a hub in my monitor which is sometimes
powering my webcam.



this is a really frustrating problem, i haven't added anything new or changed much, i actually removed my old cd burner that I also had in here becuase i thought it was a power issue, but that hasn't solved anything.. is there anyway i can be more sure if its the power supply?

It has also crashed reapeatedly a few times when i was trying to play farcry.. When far cry first came out, i played it for like 12 hours non stop no problems!!! i'd play it on and off for a week no problems! then recently i tried to play it and it crashed like 3 times in a row shortly minutes after trying to play it.. (just the quick reboots)..


here is what my BIOS says
:
CPU Vcore 0 1.64v
DDR DIMM 1 2.50v
3.3v 2 3.19v
+5v 3 4.91v (jumps to 4.94 sometimes)
+12v 4 12.73v
-12v 5 (-)12.03v (sometimes 12.11)
-5v 6 (-)5.45v
5vsb 7 4.94v
Voltage Battery 3.19v
Tempature 1 55C (i asume this is proc? it was at 57 at first but after being idle for 20 minutes it dropped to 55)
Tempature 2 (-) 55C (I asume this is my free floating heat sensor)
Fan 1 Speed 3515rpm
Fan 2 speed 0rpm (Dont have any other monitored ones)

thats what my bios says.. that free floating sensor has some sticky left over gunk on it (i was using it on a ramsink before, but now it just sits in there.. and its hovering just barely above the back side
of my Radeon 9800 (pro) so that might explain why it thinks its so hot
in the case..

here's the case i got, but on this website it says 300w
that is incorrect the powersupply i have in my case is
350w but the outside looks exactly like this

http://www.infotechnow.com/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=808

I've added one extra fan in the back just below the cpu and about 1 inch above the radeon.. it actually sucks air in.. then i have a fan
in the side near the plexiglass that is pushing air out.. This is probably a bad design huh.. please fire away with your thoughts


any suggestions are well appreciated! thanks guys!

 

[nanaki333]

well.. if it's one thing i've learned, it's how to troubleshoot random lockups and reboots (won't be too hard to find my threads on my problem). i would reboot every 4-10 hours, then it got to the point where it'd just freeze after a couple hours of being up. first thing's first, try running memtest just to make sure your memory is not the issue. then, i would try replacing the video card for sh!ts 'n giggles. try repairing your windows xp installation. try doing a BIOS update (doubt that'll really help). then, the thing that it ended up being in my comp, try replacing the harddrive. i got 2 bad harddrives in a row that i tried. the third one was a charm. since i replaced the second bad one, my comp hasn't locked up or rebooted in almost 2 weeks now. oh yeah, and of course, try replacing the PSU if that doesn't fix it. i went out and bought a new mobo, psu, cpu, memory, cd drives, hdd, cpu hsf, vid card, and all this time i just replaced a bad hdd with a bad one which made me think the hdd was fine.

 

[Electricview]

Well i did just recently get a MAxtor 250 gig hard drive.. but their program that just tested it today says it working fine.. How was your hard drives bad? bad sectors? and how did it cuase a random reboot? how can i possibly know?? i sure hope its not the hard drive.. i wana say it was still rebooting before i got this new hard drive... but i'm not positive.

what mem program should i use?

 

[nanaki333]

well, before it would just randomly reboot, there were no signs of hdd failure or anything. well, there was obviously something failing. i replaced my main OS drive and reinstalled windows. then it started just randomly locking up. first locking up after about a day, then 12 hours, then after just a couple of hours. i noticed it was my harddrive when i replaced my HSF on my cpu, which by the way was a cheap $10 one that cools my cpu better than the volcano11, i heard a weird noise. didn't know which drive it was, so i just unplugged each drive while it was still on til it went away. turns out i replaced a bad drive with another bad drive. the first drive didn't make any noise, but the second one made a slight clicking. after replacing the drive the 3rd time, i haven't had a reboot or lockup in 2 weeks. try putting in another drive and see how it likes that. couldn't hurt. heck, it might even be your IDE cables. did you use the same ones or did you replace those as well?

who knows, it could be your cpu itself. that temperature is pretty high for an athlon. mine runs pretty hot and it only idles at 44c and it's an xp2800. try taking off the sides of your case, cool air will do it good.

 

[qquizz]

Originally posted by: Electricview
what mem program should i use?

http://www.memtest86.com/