Random reboots

[gazoo]

Ok, you were all very helpful last time about my server so I thought I'd ask you about my client hardware trouble.

My client has become unstable lately. I was starting to blame gbpvr but it started messing up no matter what I was doing. I get random reboots. They also leave NO LOG TRACES ANYWHERE (gb or system or anything). The screen goes temporarily black with about 4 lines of indistinguishable writing at the top (like a does window or POST screen). Things typically get really nasty unstable right before it does it too (like IE or taskbar lock up for a few secs.)

It's not heat, all within norms. It's not an underpowered supply, it's way higher than it needs. It could be bad memory or failing supply, but I was curious to see what everyone thought or if these exact symptoms had happened to anyone.

I don't leave the machine running ever, but I do leave it on for extended periods in S2 sleep (where it keeps the ram powered up only.) It's on a APC UPS. The specs are in my signature under client.

thanks.

[Graham]

Do you have Control Panel --> System --> Advanced --> Automatically Restart not ticked to force to it halt instead of reboot?

[gazoo]

probably, I will check..

[martint123]

The main things over the years that have caused reboots are device drivers.
Changed any recently?

[johnsonx42]

try down-clocking your ram a bit.

also, I see the board is reasonably new, but how about the power supply?

[gazoo]

The board and the power supply were bought at the same time, about a year ago. No new stuff at all. I was thinking of upgrading from catalyst 8.5, to the latest, but there's no guarantee that will do anything. It's really weird, last night it locked up while using IE7. It just stopped responding for like 45 secs, and then blank screen and reboot. No blue screen, no other warning, no admin logs, nothing.

It's been happening frequently while watching movies via file shares. It could also be a motherboard issue, but who knows what it really is. I'm trying to get hold of a memory testing boot disk or something to try to rule the memory out. That sound like a good idea?

Here are the exact pieces parts:


Sony Optiarc 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model AD-7191S - OEM
ASUS X-Mars 70mm Ball The Light Cooler for Dual-Core CPU - OEM
Rosewill RV350 350W ATX 1.3 Power Supply - Retail
ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Western digital 200GB IDE drive
A-DATA Value Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model ADQVE1A16KN - Retail
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Windsor 2.0GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor Model ADO3800IAA5CU - OEM
MCE303 case - built in IR receiver and VFD

[imagn]

I had a problem once when i was building a system, that turned out to be ram issues, It caused issues with the install of XP and would cause reboots when using the anything. I removed one of the ram chips and then it all seemed to work fine, this was after many frustrating hours of not checking the memory first

[johnsonx42]

I'd strongly recommend downclocking your RAM to DDR2-667 just to see if it helps. I've had more than one AMD system that should have worked perfectly at DDR2-800 instead require a downclock to make it stable.

It was very hard to troubleshoot, as the system would pass memtest86+ for hours at the full speed, yet still randomly reboot several times a week.

The performance loss at DDR2-667 will be negligable.

You could also run memtest86+ and see if you actually have a bad DIMM.

[gazoo]

ok, I'm going to do memtest tonight. How do I downclock the mem? BIOS? Details? Is it the timings (5-5-5-12) or something else? Sorry, I don't usually mess with overclocking too much.

[johnsonx42]

In the BIOS, most all AMD boards have a setting for memory speed - the default is 'Auto' or 'By SPD', and then there are choices like 'Limit-400', 'Limit-333', etc. You'll want Limit-333mhz.