Spontaneous reboot - possible hard drive troubles?

[Lutrosis]

I've been paranoid as of late that my hard drive is going to fail, since I don't have it backed up. The last few days my PC's been doing spontaneous reboots on me. It restarts without warning, but then boots just fine afterwards. What're the chances that the problem stems from a hard-drive just beginning to go? I suppose bad mains power could be to blame as well, but I haven't noticed any lights dimming.

-Lutrosis

 

[lobadobadingdong]

1. get a battery backup on your system and you don't have to worry about bad/poor line conditions.
2. it's more likely you have flaky power and/or a power supply and/or memory to cause random restarts. Have you run memtest?

 

[redbeard1]

I am guessing XP for an OS? You might try disabling automatic reboot so that it will at least give you a blue screen. You can find this setting in the advanced tab of the system properties. Then go to the startup and recovery option and uncheck the box for automatically reboot.

 

[johnjkr1]

If you really think its the hard drive, you can easily test it out with the diagnostic program from the drive maker...they are pretty bad at weeding out bad drives.

 

[jfunk]

It's much more likely that random reboots would be caused by either power supply, motherboard, or software than it is the HD.



j

 

[Lutrosis]

Thanks guys - I'll still most likely be snagging a new drive, but it's nice to know that I *probably* don't have to worry about a drive crash in the next 18 hours.

-Lutrosis

 

[bigalt]

if i remember right there should be a log of what the computer was doing each time it reboots?

some sort of events list? sorry i can't remember where to find it.

 

[nork]

yes, you can find the log, i think its in windows folder, but not 100% sure, if not keep looking you'll find it.
do a search for log on your c drive

Heres on sure-fire way to get a log file in win xp:
Start your computer.
Just before XP starts to load, press F8 as if you were trying to get into safe mode.
Select Enable Boot Logging option, and then press enter.
After boot to win xp, go to C:\Windows\Ntbtlog.txt file. There you will find a list of all of the drivers that did or tried to load during the boot process. By examining this file you may spot which service or driver is causing the problem.

 

[nork]

oh ya, these guys are right, its not likely its your hard drive that is the prob, more likely bad ram or power supply probs, but could be mobo or maybe even video, but not hard drive. The hard drive usually makes grinding noises and freezes up but not re-booting.

 

[jinsonxu]

Gosh, i've that problem too recently

My old system a duron 700 o/ced to 900 which has been on for nearly 24/7 the past 4 years (minus the periods for maintainance) has been doing these weird reboots lately.

I've swapped power supplies (from 350 watts to 450 watts) same thing happens. I've enabled motherboard monitor and logging every 1 second interval and the log files don't show any noticeable variations for the voltages nor temps. I've even reduced the chip back to 700 mhz, slowed down my memory to 100mhz instead of 133mhz and if anything, it reboots even faster (now it wouldn't even get to the windows 2000 login form.)

Seem everything it gets close to reaching the login, the comp restarts for no reason. GRR. (it wasn't so bad earlier, it'd reboot but wasn't restricted to the period just before the login.)

Only thing i haven't tested would be to swap out the memory sticks, use another harddisk, reformat, run a full virus scan (dat files all uptodate)

Using a maxtor 80 gig 5.4k rpm drive here.

So annoyed sigh Am hoping i'll manage to boot it into windows soon so i can save my data. (backup is a couple days behind)

 

[nork]

jinsonxu and Lutrosis

Presuming you are both in win xp, then disable automatic reboot as redbeard suggested and also make a log file as i suggested earlier on.
Then post results here and we can help you out.

 

[Kuznetsov]

Originally posted by: jinsonxu
Gosh, i've that problem too recently

My old system a duron 700 o/ced to 900 which has been on for nearly 24/7 the past 4 years (minus the periods for maintainance) has been doing these weird reboots lately.

I've swapped power supplies (from 350 watts to 450 watts) same thing happens. I've enabled motherboard monitor and logging every 1 second interval and the log files don't show any noticeable variations for the voltages nor temps. I've even reduced the chip back to 700 mhz, slowed down my memory to 100mhz instead of 133mhz and if anything, it reboots even faster (now it wouldn't even get to the windows 2000 login form.)

Seem everything it gets close to reaching the login, the comp restarts for no reason. GRR. (it wasn't so bad earlier, it'd reboot but wasn't restricted to the period just before the login.)

Only thing i haven't tested would be to swap out the memory sticks, use another harddisk, reformat, run a full virus scan (dat files all uptodate)

Using a maxtor 80 gig 5.4k rpm drive here.

So annoyed sigh Am hoping i'll manage to boot it into windows soon so i can save my data. (backup is a couple days behind)

I got the same problem last time. My old computer Athlon TBIRD have been running 24/7 all this time since 2000. All of a sudden it started to REBOOTS and it does that a lot to the point that the windows was corrupted that i cant even boot anymore. Trying to reinstall windows was impossible since it would reboots everytime the installation begin. The system wont pass memtest86 test #6. Prime95 torture would cause the computer to reboots or operation halted due to errors within 1 minute or even less.

I also gave it True480, and change the system performance setting to standard from optimal. Also ran the Dram at CL3 and 100mhz.

Now all i took off the heatsink and clean it up, clean the cpu too (during this time i notice the cheapo thermal compound dried up). I applied some AS5 and installed the heatsink back. I also change the BIOS setting to disable USB Legacy support something or rather and start by memtesting it afterwards. It now pass memtest and prime95 can go on for a days without any errors. So did i find anything wrong with it??
no not really


Im confused.
I know the temperature was a bit high with the thermal grease dried up it was around 69 - 72C usually. Which is fine for TBIRD even though it was a little high.
It is now sitting at 52C though, so it could be the heat, but not too sure.

 

[nork]

It sounds to me like your cpu was running so hot that it melted the thermal paste and then caused the whole thing to overheat even more until you had problems. Sometimes, along with the cpu running hot and the thermal paste melting or losing its power, the computer can get banged around so that the hs/fan gets moved off-center and that causes more over-heating probs.
Many times i have had people bring their puter in for repairs and i have seen the hs/fan not on correct, maybe it got pushed or moved and they never noticed. I have seen too much dust and dirt inside the heatsink. I have seen heatsinks full of drywall powder, i have seen almost everything there is to see. In most cases, its a matter of the heatsink/fan either not being installed properly in the first place, or poor thermal paste, or the heatsink/fan was moved a bit and not making good contact, and maybe the thermal paste drying up so there is little contact. So many things it could be.

To jinsonxu and Lutrosis

Presuming you are both in win xp, then disable automatic reboot as redbeard suggested and also make a log file as i suggested earlier on.
Then post results here and we can help you out.
That is, provided that your heatsink/fan is on correctly!