PC Restarting By Itself (even after new HDD and rebuild)

[mixedup]

RAM has been in the PC for a while. Most recent additional only a few weeks back was a new video card (GeForce).

Re Powersupply - Is there a way to tell whether my power supply would be up to it?

Latest Update - After downloading and analysing crash dumps, using the windows debugging tools, (for which I still haven't been able to point the finger) the PC is now seemingly running. GBPVR is working, recording etc. There were a few programs that lost configuration (as if windows rolled back to a previous state) but generally speaking things seem to be working now...umm....

I've increased the size of the crashdump from mini to the next level. I'll just wait and see I guess If it is hardware I guess powersupply and latest videocard would be worth focusing in at.

Tks again

[congenictv]

I've just bought a new HDD and rebuild Windows XP as for a week or so before I was having my PC restart intermittently and I would hear a bit of a clunking sound (I assumed this was the primary HDD) around the same time.

P4 1.6GHz, 1.2GB RAM, 2 x 300GB HDD, new video card too

Sudden reboots in my experience has been related to either overheating power supply, overheating cpu (heatsink/fan dusty or failing) or overheating video card (heatsink/fan dusty or failing). Try moving your computer to a well ventilated area, open up the case to allow more air into it, and blow/vacuum the dust off and see if that makes a difference.

You can try this utility (motherboard monitor mbm5) to check your cpu temps and see if it goes really high, (it would have been nice if you had a baseline to compare to) and also check your 3.3v rail for your psu...a good number would be 3.4v (at least that's what i was told back in the day. Also 2 x 300 gig hard drives each at 7200rpm can generate quite a bit of heat...make sure they're separated and try blowing some air into the opened case to see if your system runs more stable. If so...then heat could be your issue. MBM5 (i haven't tried the newest version) should show you rpm of your fan, cpu temp, ambient temp etc...

I agree with tipstir, with such much stuff in your computer you may need a higher watt psu.

http://mbm.livewiredev.com/download.html

I know this sounds like a low-tech solution, but just some "might as well" try solutions to see if it helps.

[mixedup]

thanks

Re PowerSupply - just got the case off and I'm looking at the powersupply - it reads as follows. How does this sound?
* EAGLE Model DR-A350ATX (Intel4 Pentium read)
* TOTAL OUTPUT=350w

Also good pointer re HDDs. They're currently on adjactent rails. I'll separate them a bit.

Tks again

[mixedup]

PS Just looking at my case I really only have a fan on teh motherboard itself and one in the powersupply. There's no actual case fan. This might be a good bet to get one that screws into the case itself. My case has an obvious spot for one.

[mixedup]

temperatures look ok - I get a 3.28V in the +3.3V area of the graph - see attached graph.

During the reboot for the monitoring s/w install I had about 4 lockups. After the 1st it says some registry settings were lost and it was taking values from a previous log. Then some things like start shortcuts weren't working (i.e. some config had been lost)

The lockups were reporting the following:
1st STOP 50 - win32k.sys PAGE_FAULT_IN_NOPAGE_AREA

2nd Time = STOP 24 - Ntfs.sys related error

3rd time = STOP 8E

4th time = STOP 50, another PAGE_FAULT_IN_NOPAGE_AREA

Doesn't seem good Especitally the files being reported seem to be core windows files no

[mixedup]

Heres the microsoft windows debug tool output - in this case I'm not sure what it actually tells me

*******************************************************************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA (50)
Invalid system memory was referenced. This cannot be protected by try-except,
it must be protected by a Probe. Typically the address is just plain bad or it
is pointing at freed memory.
Arguments:
Arg1: e2724000, memory referenced.
Arg2: 00000000, value 0 = read operation, 1 = write operation.
Arg3: 8057fbce, If non-zero, the instruction address which referenced the bad memory
address.
Arg4: 00000001, (reserved)

Debugging Details:
------------------

***** Kernel symbols are WRONG. Please fix symbols to do analysis.


MODULE_NAME: nt

FAULTING_MODULE: 804d7000 nt

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 42250ff9

READ_ADDRESS: unable to get nt!MmSpecialPoolStart
unable to get nt!MmSpecialPoolEnd
unable to get nt!MmPoolCodeStart
unable to get nt!MmPoolCodeEnd
e2724000

FAULTING_IP:
nt+a8bce
8057fbce ?? ???

MM_INTERNAL_CODE: 1

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 10

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: COMMON_SYSTEM_FAULT

BUGCHECK_STR: 0x50

LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from 00000000 to 8053331e

STACK_TEXT:
f78caaa4 00000000 e2724000 00000000 f78cab24 nt+0x5c31e


STACK_COMMAND: .bugcheck ; kb

FOLLOWUP_IP:
nt+a8bce
8057fbce ?? ???

FAULTING_SOURCE_CODE:


FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

SYMBOL_NAME: nt+a8bce

IMAGE_NAME: ntoskrnl.exe

BUCKET_ID: WRONG_SYMBOLS

Followup: MachineOwner
---------

[borgs5]

Are you sure its not a dodgy driver causing the problem. I installed an external modem into one of my PCs. Everytime I shut the PC down the PC would restart all by itself. As soon as I disabled the driver it cured the problem.

I would unplug all USB devices from the machine and see if the problem goes away. If it does, reintroduce each device a day at a time and see if a particular device causes the problem.

I'm currently installing software onto a Dell 5150 I just bought. After I loaded all the software in one sitting I was getting lots of program faults. I'm now introducing just one piece of software each day and testing thoroughly - so far so good. I'd also be a careful with automatic Microsoft updates - I'm sure they've caused my PCs to become unstable - I now install them manually and then test. Also, firewall and anti-virus software can really "kill" PCs. You may want to test it with no firewall or anti-virus software (obviously not connected to any other PC or the internet when you do)

PCs can be such a pain!

[mixedup]

thanks for the tip - its kills me that the PC/system is generally working fine, but just occasionally gives you the problem - I did just recently (today) rectify the driver software for my 4 port USB2 PCI card (as I was getting a 'you could run faster USB if you upgraded to USB2' type message)

The microsoft debug utils are still a little tricky for me. I wonder if the old Dr Watson is still around and if so could it diagnose exactly what the problem was

[bgowland]

*******************************************************************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA (50)
Invalid system memory was referenced. This cannot be protected by try-except,
it must be protected by a Probe. Typically the address is just plain bad or it
is pointing at freed memory.

Could be a red herring but this still makes me wonder if you've got a degraded RAM module on the mainboard. I'd still be inclined to pull the DIMMs and try one at a time if for no other reason than to eliminate them from the suspects list.

Something else that occurs to me - you said you did a rebuild after adding your new HDD - did you put the new HDD in as your C: drive or did you re-use the orginal as C? If you re-used your original, a possibility is that it has disk errors - might be worth booting to safe mode command prompt and running chkdsk /r to locate and recover bad sectors if there are any.

[mixedup]

Re Memory - You might be right. For the moment the problem is the PC seems to be working fine for several hours straight. If it keeps playing up I'll try this.

Re new HDD - I put the new HDD in as C so it had a complete new format/build.

Tks