Semi-Random Rebooting...

[Kalisperas]

I need some advice. I'm having a strange rebooting problem, and I just can't seem to pin it down. The problem is sort of semi-random, as in it only seems to happen when I play games. And only in some games. Half-Life 2 always does it. Doom 3 never does it. Others do it sometimes but not always. And strangest is the WAY it reboots. This is what happens: I hear the monitor click as if it's changing resolution, like it always does when I reboot. But then it just stays off, and the computer just sits there, doing nothing for a minute or two, then it suddenly reboots. Sometimes during the "sitting time" the sound that was playing at the time of the crash will continually loop until the actual reboot. Other times the game will freeze until the reboot instead of the screen going black. I turned off the "auto-reboot" option in my startup and recovery settings, thinking I'd get myself a BSOD and a helpful error message, but no dice. Same thing happens. And my Event Viewer shows nothing out of the ordinary. My VIA 4-in-1's, BIOS, and audio drivers are all the latest. I've tried the current Catalyst drivers as well as the last two releases and the Omega drivers, with no change in the problem. Thinking it might be something with Windows, I booted up from a virgin install of WinXP64 Beta from a seperate partition, but the problem persisted.

Now, I'm assuming it has something to do with my new hardware, as I've recently upgraded some parts in my machine, namely the PSU, motherboard and processer, and RAM, in that order. I used to have random rebooting problems with my old parts, but they were truly random then. Now it only happens when I play games, but it's more frequent. The games that have the problem won't run for more than 5-10 minutes without rebooting, but others I can play for hours without an issue.

It doesn't seem to be an overheating issue, as my CPU isn't getting much above 45c. I don't have a temp probe on my video card, but I opened up two slots below it, and even pulled the side of the case off and pointed a room fan over the video card, but it didn't help.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Here's a breakdown of my system:
WinXP Home SP1 (or WinXP64 Beta)
Motherboard: Asus A8V Deluxe
Processer: Athlon64 3200
Video Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128
PSU: Thermaltake PurePower 410
RAM: 1Gb (512x2) Corsair Value Select DDR400
Drives: WD 80GB 7200RPM
WD 120GB 7200RPM
NEC ND-2500A DVD-RW/CD-RW
Lite-On CD-RW
Misc: Hauppauge WinTV TV Tuner
Firewire card
Cold cathode light

 

[HardcoreRobot]

you could go back version on audio or video drivers and experiment with that

 

[Warman]

after a random reboot

go to ->control panel-> admin tools-> event viewer and look for an error in the log there , this happens to me as well and not just in games.

the error is something about my vid. card going into an infinite loop.

i just reinstalled my mobo drivers and my vid card drivers and i´ve got no reboots so far in 1/2 a day, hope it stays that way...

hope this helps

 

[KBtn]

I agree. You might want to roll back the graphics drivers. I had a similar problem with Call of Cuty and the new ATI driver release. I rolled back to the previous version and everything runs rock solid.