PC reboots randomly

[tarun]

My Windows XP PC keeps re-booting randomly (without the 'iasss.exe is closing' or any such message).
Can you please point me to some free virus-removal tools?

I have ZA Free and Mcafee 9 (partially updated) that arent helping. I will DL AVG shortly.

[egghead]

i use nod32,
http://www.nod32.com/

you should update your video and sound drivers.

are you overclocking?

[rohitk89]

I have the problem some too.

I ran CCleaner to clean the PC of unused files and issues with the registry. Then I ran RegCleaner to remove unwanted software/old software fiels and ran a full scan with AVG, Ad-Aware and Housecall. No virus/spyware was detected.

I should also add that the same thing happens with FireFox (I get the 'send error report' message 80% of the time) and that all this started when I got more RAM added (256MB->768MB)

The PC reboots about once a day on average and Firefox about twice.

edit: I'm not overclocking and Microsoft Update shows no available updates for my audio/video drivers. I'm running Windows XP Professional with SP2.

[tarun]

i use nod32,
http://www.nod32.com/

you should update your video and sound drivers.

are you overclocking?
No, I'm not overclocking and I checked the video and sound drivers, they are fine.

Thanks, I will DL the NOD32 trial, but will I have to uninstall AVG too?

Is there no chance that it is something similar to the blaster worm or such like?

[Curio]

Random reboots can be caused by many things most common of them are these:-
1. Faulty RAM
2. Faulty Mainboard
3. Faulty Drivers for anything but especially Sound, Video and Network.
4. Faulty hard disk but this is usually accompanied by lock ups as well.
5. Corrupt Windows system files.

[rohitk89]

I guess it has to be option 1. Would that also cause problems with FireFox? I'm sure the problems began only after the RAM upgrade.

Could you elaborate on 1 please. Perhaps with a little info on what could have gone wrong and what I can do to fix it...

[tarun]

Random reboots can be caused by many things most common of them are these:-
1. Faulty RAM
2. Faulty Mainboard
3. Faulty Drivers for anything but especially Sound, Video and Network.
4. Faulty hard disk but this is usually accompanied by lock ups as well.
5. Corrupt Windows system files.
Wouldn't that show up in device manager?

[Reverend]

Could you elaborate on 1 please. Perhaps with a little info on what could have gone wrong and what I can do to fix it...A stick of RAM contains several small chips.If one of those small chips is faulty it can cause errors.

If you are using more than one stick try each one separately. By the process of elimination you will be able to tell if you have a faulty stick.

[efc]

A temporary thing to do is turn off "automatically restart" by accomplishing a right click on My Computer, select Properties, then the Advanced tab. Find Startup and Recovery then click the Settings button and finally remove the check mark on automatically restart.

This won't prevent the computer from freezing but it might give you the opportunity to download and run memtest86 (http://majorgeeks.com/Memtest86_d1247.html). If it is memory, it should show up during that test. If you have multiple memory sticks, you can try one stick at a time to eliminate a bad stick.

I would also consider that the CPU could be overheating. Dust in heatsink veins can create a heating problem.

[tarun]

Thanks all.

[rohitk89]

If you are using more than one stick try each one separately I never had any problems with my single stick of RAM before. I'm certain the problems began only after I installed a second stick.

I'll try EFC's solution and see what happens.

And yeah, thanks for the replies :)

edit: could the firefox crashes in anyway be related to problems with RAM? No other software on my PC behaves like ff- crashing unexpectedly almost all the time...

[efc]

I'm certain the problems began only after I installed a second stick.


Sounds like a place to start. Remove the new stick and use it a while. If the problem goes away, you have found the problem.

Most memory has lifetime warranty. I have never attempted to exchange memory, so I don't know how hard it might be.

[Curio]

Even relatively small differences in the timing of the memory chips can cause reboot problems. It is not generally something you can fix except by replacing the ram, it's always recommended to use chips from the same manufacturer and preferably even the same exact part number.

What exactly the problem might be with the ram no-one would ever bother to find out because it is far cheaper and infinitely quicker to just throw it away and replace it. These circuits run at speeds of hundreds of millions of operations per second - any kind of defect can be a problem.

The reason they don't show errors in the event logs is that the system has reset before any data could be written - in event logs you sometimes get a warning with 'the previous system shutdown at 'TIME' was unexpected' but little else.

[egghead]

power supplies can also crash tyhe computer.

Can't rule out a power supply that is slowly dying here

[rohitk89]

power supplies can also crash tyhe computer.Would I have to worry about that even if I own an assembled computer?

[egghead]

that all depends

some are good and others are flaky

if your pc crashes alot it is also worth a try barrowing another ps for tests

[Raging_Dragon]

Have a look in your windows folder. Do you have a folder called Minidump (C:\WINDOWS\Minidump)?

[tarun]

Have a look in your windows folder. Do you have a folder called Minidump (C:\WINDOWS\Minidump)?
Yes I do. Thats like the stop error dump or the dump of RAM before a reboot? What do I do to it?

[rohitk89]

No Minidump here.