Re: rebooting on own?

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

Mark G. wrote:
Thanks for all the responses. I went inside the machine to check fans and they all seem to be working fine. Temps don't seem to be an issue. There was some dust, but I took care of that. I also, as recommended went into the event viewer and browsed to see what was going on right after a lock up, but I didn't see anything whatsoever that seemed to explain it. I also viewed events from the past fews days and most of the items were 'information' rather than anything else. There were a couple of errors, but nothing that seemed to point at why this is happening. With that said, I went and check to see what was runnign on startup and shut down some things (there weren't a lot of startup items to begin with), but even at this point, this machine is looking up. I would say it looks up more than it actually reboots itself. I had thought it was a screen saver thing as it does look up frequently while in screen saver mode, but I do recall from the past that this doesn't seem to be the culprit as it will lock up when in use as well. Just always seems to lock up in screen saver mode too. So any other suggestions? Also, any chance that if a hard drive failure is happening that this could be the case too? Disk appears healthy, but I know it is old. Don't want to replace anythign I don't have too. Am just trying to figure this all out. I appreciate any more help you all can provide!

You can run the stress test provided by the mersenne.org Prime95 program.
When prompted, indicate you're stress testing. This version of program,
starts a test thread per CPU core. A thread will stop on the first error
detected. One reason for an error to occur, is marginal memory operation.
Or an overclocked CPU. The program does an arithmetic calculation with a
known answer, and any errors are either caused by a defective CPU (unlikely),
or marginal memory. For the memory, sometimes even a slight voltage boost
in the BIOS, is enough to fix it. (Not something you're likely to find
in a HP/Dell/Gateway etc.) I've had this program stop in as little as
10 seconds, when an overclocked CPU was under test.

http://majorgeeks.com/Prime95_d4363.html

While the test is running, you can monitor the CPU temperature with Speedfan.
It understands the hardware monitor on a number of motherboards. Due to the
lack of standards though, the answers may not always be what you'd expect.
(I have some motherboards here, where a voltage measurement with a multimeter,
show power supply voltages to be exactly correct, while the built-in measurement
is off quite a bit.)

http://www.almico.com/speedfan438.exe

You're aiming for a CPU temperature of 65C or less, while Prime95 is running.

In addition to the direct symptoms (whether Prime95 errors out almost
immediately), you're also looking for indirect symptoms. Does the
machine freeze while that test is running ?

Fixing freezing problems is not easy, because they leave so few symptoms
to work with. In at least one case, a freeze was caused by a certain
network chip driver, and usually after about half an hour of system operation.
But that is the only case I know of, from several years ago, where it was
an actual bug in a piece of software causing it. More of the time, you might
only find it by replacing stuff.

Paul



"Jim" <bojimbo261@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:b1guv41vj0duotqeaogakusvb1rg4ernhb@xxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 4 May 2009 01:59:33 -0700, "Mark G." <askmefirst@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Have a machine running XP Pro and it has had issues for some time. This is
an AMD based machine that my wife mostly uses. Isn't overly loaded as far as
software is concerned and does have all recent patches and no viruses to
speak of.

Anyhow, quite often, this machine will look up or will simply reboot on its
own. This happens whether there is a user at the station or not. Just
random! Kind of strange behavior and I am trying to figure out what is
causing it. Was thinking of just reloading the OS or doing a repair, but
beforeso, I started to wonder if it was beyond that and maybe a hardware
issue causing it? Could it be? Could this be a sign of a faulty power
supply? I have had power supplies act up before, but not necessarily in this
fashion. What are your thoughts on that? Any thoughts on what to check?
Would hate to reload or repair just ot have the behavior continue. Any
thoughts to the best fix to this?

Thanks much for any and all help you all can give me. Hope I can get it
figured.

Dust inside the system , causing overheating ?


.

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