Re: Windows XP Random Powerdowns

astrosapiens wrote:

Hello to everyone,

I am trying to help a friend with his computer. He has been having some weird problems for the past month and I can't figure them out.

It all started a month ago when his Windows XP SP2 started giving him blue screens just after the Windows XP loading screen. I don't remember the exact messages but from what I remember when I researched them...they had something to do with the corrupted registry hive. We tried recovering the registry hive with the one from the recover point but it did not work so we deleted C:\Windows and reinstalled Windows XP again (we needed the data on the HDD untouched). It did not work because we would get blue screen during installation. We then installed the XP on the second HDD on his PC. It worked for a while but then another problem started appearing: his PC would randomly power down. He would run the PC for 30min to 1 hour and the PC would power down by itself. We managed to re-install Windows XP on the first HDD again, but the power downs don't seem to go away. It is even worse...the power downs happen 5 min after starting XP. They would happen if he runs an mp3 or media files, browse the internet for a while...purely random. I tried disabling the Automatic Restart on physical memory dump hoping that it will cath the error but it does not work.

Does anyone know what the issue might be? The HDD? The Motherboard? (we narrowed it down to these two since we have played around with the hardware configuration).

His hardware is as follows:
Motherboard: VIA Apollo
CPU: AMD Duron 1GHZ
RAM: 256 SDRAM PC133
HDD: Maxtor 40GB DiamondMax

Could be an overheating problem or a power supply problem. Open the case and blow out all the dust, make sure all the fans are working. Get a utility to monitor the internal temps.

To test if it's the power supply swap out with a good one.

Test the memory using these programs. You should run both.
Memtest86+
http://www.memtest.org/

Windows Memory Diagnostic
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Download a drive diagnostic utility from the hard drive manufacturer's web site and run it.

--
Rock
MS MVP Windows - Shell/User

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Windows XP Random Powerdowns
    ... or the power supply. ... It all started a month ago when his Windows XP SP2 started giving him ... screens just after the Windows XP loading screen. ... We then installed the XP on the second HDD on his PC. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Windows XP Random Powerdowns
    ... |>> screens just after the Windows XP loading screen. ... We then installed the XP on the second HDD on his PC. ... |>> but the power downs don't seem to go away. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)