Self boot / Reboot Loop

[jsteele]

For some time now I have had a strange problem with the system booting and going into a reboot loop. There are several situations in which this occurs.

First right after the EPG is updated. I'm using ZAP2IT set for 11AM update. I have two profiles define, one for cable (about 30 channels) the other for Dish satellite (about 100 channels). Normally no one would see this happen because no one would be home. But on those occasions when I work at home or on weekends it happens as regular as clockwork. Almost without exception when the update occurs the system boots itself after what appears to be the first profile -- around 11:15AM. The system will boot itself and then continue to reboot just as one of the GBPVR functions kicks off. The strange thing is that when someone gets home at 5PM and turns on the set the system is up and waiting properly --- I have no idea how many times it has rebooted in the meantime however.

I do know that it is possible to shortcut the reboot loop by starting in Safe Mode, setting "ChkDsk c: /f" for the next boot and restarting the system. ChkDsk NEVER finds or fixes any errors but when the system reboots after ChkDsk GBPVR always starts normally.

The second situation is a random reboot. This evening in the midst of watching a program the system rebooted itself. It then went into the reboot loop until I started in Safe Mode and ran ChkDsk. As always, ChkDsk does not find or fix any errors but when the system restarts GBPVR runs normally.

I've attached the entire set of logs from today in hopes that someone can help sort this out.

[jsteele]

Tipsir

thanks, I'll give that a try.

[jsteele]

Tipsir

No joy. My GBPVR is shut down right now, it went into another reboot loop last night for no apparent reason and I didn't have time to fool with it trying to get it back running. It has now reached to point where it will not run more than a few hours before it crashes. I am at a loss to understand what is happening between the crashes after the EPG updates and the random crahes watching live TV.

There is little if anything useful in any of the logs. The XP Event Logs don't show anything particularly enlightening aside from the ChkDsk report that it found and fixed a 'few minor inconsistencies' on the disk each time it runs --- the on screen display does not report anything at all. There is no indication of what the 'minor inconsistencies' are or where they are located. But clearly since GBPVR will run OK for a while after a ChkDsk these 'inconsistencies' are occuring in some part of the disk being used by GBPVR --- my money is on the database.

As long as I don't start any of the GBPVR functions XP will come up and run fine. Something has gone wrong and I guess my only recourse is to start from scratch.

At this point I have a brand new 250GB 7200 RPM SATA drive (although I already need another one as I am at 220 GB of video :-) and a brand new 40GB 7200 RPM PATA drive. I'm going to move all the video/music/etc files over to the SATA drive and reinstall GBPVR on the 40GB drive. I also have a not-so-new 40GB drive that I'm considering using for the page file and miscellaneous "stuff" -- downloads of drivers, etc.

So I guess I know what I'm going to be doing for several evenings :-)

[groover km]

This sounds to me like either:

a) A hard drive about to fail. I would be backing stuff up before going further.
b) Temperature related issues. Do you have MBM5 running?

Just a couple of thoughts.

[jsteele]

groover km
I'll take a look at the temperature question. I don't have MBM running on this machine but I'll install it. The system has been powered off for 18 hours and it came up and ran the first time so you may be on to something.

[gEd]

if you suspect a temp problem, try leaving the side / lid off for a while to see if this improves stability. Is the cpu fan spinning ok?

The disk gets warm but should not be hot.

once you have backed everything up, you need to run a proper surface scan to check for hardware errors. I don;t know if you have any such software available.

i had a look on download.com and there is this, that appears to have some +ve ratings

http://www.download.com/Emsa-DiskCheck/3...ag=lst-0-6

but it is usually better to download a diagnostic disk from the disk manufactures website. Thsi often generates a bootable floopy, from which you boot the pc and then it runs a low level check on the disk and attempts to relocate any bad blocks that it finds.

[Zool]

I had a problem that was close to that, was a bad hard drive. Download this drive test and you can test your dive. If you have ATA deives not sure if it will work I have only used it on IDE deives.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm