Re: Spontaneous Reboot

Edward W. Thompson wrote:
I have recently carried out some 'upgrades' to my machine and now it occasionally reboots for no obvious reason. The 'upgrades' include increasing RAM from 1 to 2MB, changing a HDD from 80GB to 320GB and the addition of a PCI SATA Card. The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000 Pro and the CPU an Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz with WINXP Pro SP2. The original system using 2 Maxtor 80GB SATA HDD and 1MB RAM performed without fault for the past 3 years.

The upgrades were phased. The RAM was added first and there was no problems with about two weeks operation. I then obtained a 320GB SATA Seagate Barracuda 16MB cache and as only two SATA ports are available on the MB, a 'no name' VIA VT6421 PCI SATA Card was installed. Initially I connected the new HDD to the 'SATA Card' and that configuration was trouble free for about 2/3 days. I then cloned the OS from a Maxtor HDD to the Seagate HDD and 'swapped' the drives so the Seagate 320GB drive is connected to a one board SATA port and the 80GB connected to the PCI SATA Card. It was at this point the 'spontaneous' rebooting occurred. The first time it happened I put it down to a 'spike' in the electrical supply but it has happened twice since then and I think the machine is at fault but am at a loss to understand what the problem might be. These 'reboots' do not seem to be related to a particular event, for example the most recent occurred when reading an online newspaper, the previous when running True Image imaging a drive, neither onerous operations for the machine. The events are separated by up to 24 hours so 'overheating' does not seem to be a culprit.

Can anyone offer an explanation or where to start troubleshooting?

I'd run a memory tester. I'd say that was the most likely cause.

Cheers,

Cliff

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