XP Crashes / reboots by itself

[alteredNate]

Hello,

After building my system a few months ago, I was amazed to have it run stably right off the bat. No crashes, errors, or funny stuff. I switched from a stick of 512 generic samsung PC320 to 2GB of OCZ performance ram, and things seemed to change. Things "seemed" stable but now I'm having some strange errors.

My computer suffers from random reboots sometimes, which worries me. I just did a clean install and I have the same thing. This will happen to me sometimes while watching a film, or just starting a film, or playing a game... etc. I have run memtest, prime95 torture test (over 12 hours), and several other system test utilities and I come up with NO errors.

Usually when my system reboots itself, right after I boot into windows I get the error "Generic host process has performed an error..." details from event viewer :

"Faulting application svchost.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x00000000."

And after having a look around the event viewer, I came across this one too:

"TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts."

There's several entries, and I see that they are timestamped during times when I was having trouble getting web pages to load. I don't know if it's related.

Can anyone shed some light? If it's bad ram, why can't all the programs that are made to test it find any errors??

Thanks.

 

[montag451]

Have you done some Antivirus/Adware/Malware scans?

 

[Tom93R1]

Any chance you have another power supply available to test? I had random reboots and strange errors for a couple months before I figured out that my PS was crapping out.

 

[ImDonly1]

By the way the too many TCP/IP concurrent attempts is because you have the XP SP1 or SP2 I think and it limits the attempts. You usually get this error when using file sharing software you can fix it by getting this http://www.lvllord.de/

 

[alteredNate]

Hmm... I have done malware testing, and I have nothing. In any case, this stuff was happening before and just after I re-installed everything. I sure hope it's not the power supply, as it's a brand new antec neopower.

Any other ideas?

Thanks for the TCP/IP fix, I read a bit about it and it must be P2P.

 

[Gravity]

Yes, you can run "hijackthis" proggy and figure out if you have some sort of trojan that your av can't detect.

I'd also consider reinstalling your antivirus since it seems to be the application that is crashing.

finally, have you ruled out heat as the shutdown mechanism?

 

[alteredNate]

I'd alraedy run hijackthis and there's nothing. There is no possible way that heat is the issue - I idle at 31C and load has never passed 45C (even after 10 hours of prime95). The XP-120 and a panaflo at 70% is truely an amazing combination.

Just tonight, I played a divx, and upon closing WMP the computer booted. I'm going to try a different media player, however this problem never happened once a month ago. It's happening more with this fresh install. The one thing I know is different is that I installed newer chipset drivers (nforce 5.10) and nTune (which I hadn't installed before, however I don't think that could do anything as it's not a system-resident application).

I read that often the "generic host process" failure in XP is related to sound drivers, and it's true that every time this thing crashes it's playing sound and video (or just finished, or started, or whatever). Any ideas?

At this point, it's starting to drive me nutz, so I may just put back in the sansung 512 stick for a while and see what happens.

 

[ImDonly1]

Try downloading new soundcard drivers/onboard sound. A friend on mine needed to update his or else his computer kept restarting. Maybe your copy of windows is crappy, if its "downloaded..." try a different copy from a friend and see if his works... then you can buy a legal one.

 

[fuzzynavel]

FFS people if the problem started when the 2GB or RAM was added then try putting the old stuff back in...

What is the RAM 4*512MB or 2*1GB sticks......Take it back down to 1GB and tast again...try the RAM in different slots.....

Posted by ImDonly1

Try downloading new soundcard drivers/onboard sound. A friend on mine needed to update his or else his computer kept restarting. Maybe your copy of windows is crappy, if its "downloaded..." try a different copy from a friend and see if his works... then you can buy a legal one.

How about use a legal one in the first place!!!


what programs are being run when the SVCHOST error turns up???

 

[alteredNate]

The DFI board only has 3 slots. I have 2 1024 sticks in slots 1 and 2. I was told not to run 3 sticks.

I never said I was running an illegal copy of windows.

I've tried several sound drivers and they don't seem to change much.

As for what causes the error, I have no idea!!! That's what I'm trying to find out. Usually when the computer reboots itself, it's running a divx in WMP or a game. Then, upon restarting, it has the "generic service host" error with a timestamp of the crash. However in Event viewer, the timestamp is the boot-up time. Weird. There is NO information about why this error happens, nor does it seem to have an effect on anything in the computer.

I have changed a few things in the bios - loosened up the memory timings and disabled AGP fast writes. So far, I haven't crashed!! We'll see if it lasts.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[daniel49]

nate dude what he is saying is take out the two new sticks and stick the old one back in and see if problem stops. if ram is incompatible with your system can cause all kinds of qwerky things.

ps always amazes me how many want to rip the ps out been computing for 10 years never had a bad power supply.

 

[alteredNate]

Yeah I know, I was waiting a bit before I did that. I agree it's the definitive test, however as I said, I can't get ANY doagnostic test to produce any errors, so it's hard to confirm!

 

[fuzzynavel]

Basically the way I see it is if you change something and your computer stops working as it should then put it back the way it was......see if it works normally and then maybe try and add your new components in a different way

 

[alteredNate]

I actually found the problem. I had fast writes enabled in bios, and apparently, ATI X800's don't like tha too much. It's a thing for the other team (nVidia). So far, I haven't been able to make this thing crash. It runs like a champ!!!

Thanks for the input anyway, I would have gotten to that stage. I'm just glad that I don't have to.