Computer Help

[HaRuMaN]

Anybody have any idea why a computer would randomly reboot itself?  My computer keeps doing it, I don't know why.  Some times it goes for days without doing it, other days it goes any from 15 minutes to an hour before auto-rebooting.

I'm running Windows-ME on a Intel Celeron 700 Mhz.

Help!

[Smack]

Faulty CPU fan? Maybe its failing and letting the cpu overheati and the bios is triggering the reboot / shurdown issue?

Just thinking out loud  

Smack

[Howard_Casto]

Also a bad powersupply will do the same thing.  Imo the frist thing you need to do is get windows me off of that thing.  75% of your problems will clear up just from that.  No joke.  

[Minwah]

XP reboots itself sometimes when it encounters a problem.  The only time I have had this happen my BIOS needed flashing (it didn't like something about my video card).

I don't know if ME does this tho, but just a thought.

[screaming]

Anybody have any idea why a computer would randomly reboot itself?  My computer keeps doing it, I don't know why.  Some times it goes for days without doing it, other days it goes any from 15 minutes to an hour before auto-rebooting.

I'm running Windows-ME on a Intel Celeron 700 Mhz.

Help!

  Have you actually been looking at the screen when it would randomly reboot? Where there any error messages? Any blue screens? What were you doing? Does Windows come back up complaining about an unsafe shutdown?

In general, what applications are you running? Anything in common with each time it reboots?

  Try running a full system scan using your antivirus software with the latest signatures. No antivirus software? Try AVG Anti-Virus. It's free.

  Along that vain, make sure you're not running any wacky spyware. Use SpyBot to do a system scan. Make sure you download any updates first.

  How's your hard drive space? Do you have plenty (500MB+) free?

  How old is the computer? What kind of computer is it? Is it under warranty still? Call the manufacturer.

  If it's a homebrew system, try swapping out the memory for new or other known-working modules.

  Someone else mentioned overheating. If you have any reletively recent BIOS, it will have the option to report CPU temperature. Download SpeedFan and see if your CPU is overheating and halting your system. Usually, it will just halt the system and not reboot it, but who knows?

  I also had a problem where my system would seem to reboot itself randomly and it was directly related to the video card + video card driver combination I was using. It seemed to happen when I was doing any windowing function, like opening, closing or moving a window.  Update or downgrade the video card drivers and see if the problem goes away.

  As Howard_Casto articulated, Windows ME isn't exactly the best OS in the world when stability is a factor. I would suggest either upgrading to Windows XP, Windows 2000, or even downgrading to Windows 98SE (Yes, Windows ME is _that_ bad!).

Good luck.  Let us know how it works out!

/Steve

[HaRuMaN]

Yeah, I'll be using the computer while it happens.  Running Microsoft Money or using Winamp, or playing MAME...  sometimes just surfing the internet.  There will be no blue screens, no warnings.  The mouse locks, and then it reboots, and when it comes back, I get the improper shutdown message with scan disk.

I will download those programs and check for spyware/virii.

I've got like 20 gigs free of HD space.

The coputer is about 4 years old now.  Its by no means under warranty anymore.  Its an HP Pavilion.  I had to replace the factory power supply (100 watts) after it blew, I used a 350 watt PS as a replacement.  It ran fine for nine months with the replacement before this odd problem began.

The computer ran fine for 3 years before doing this.  I know Win ME sucks but its what came with it, and I didn't have the money at the time to upgrade (or downgrade) it.

::dropkicks stupid HP::

[PacManFan]

It's also possible that you've got a virus. Have you scanned your harddrives lately?

-PMF

[HaRuMaN]

 
Ironically, it did it just now while I was scaning my hard drives for viruses.  Rebooted, checked the HD again, no virus.

[screaming]

Ironically, it did it just now while I was scaning my hard drives for viruses.  Rebooted, checked the HD again, no virus.

  Did you do everything else that was suggested, i.e. the video card driver update/downgrade, memory exchanging?

/S

[SirPeale]

Pull the motherboard and start looking at the capacitors.  Are any of them bulging or slighly puffy?  Leaking fluid?

I had the same problem with a board of mine.  Kept rebooting, hard drive errors.  Turned out to be faulty caps.  A common problem on Abit KT7A mobos.

Of course, you don't have a KT7A.  But the problem was widespread throughout the industry.    It is repairable, IF you can do multi-layer PCB soldering.

http://www.justrepairs.com/capacitor_mb.html
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=195
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/feb03/ncap.html

[HaRuMaN]

Unbelieveble...  did some poking around, found a  file named hardware.txt in the windows folder.  Read to the bottom where I find:

================================
INPUT DEVICES (MOUSE & KEYBOARD)
================================

IBM PS/2 TrackPoint
-------------------
Any version of the TrackPoint driver older than version 2.01
may cause the operating system to lock up on docking operations,
including hot-docking, hot-undocking, warm-docking, and warm-
undocking.  Newer versions of this software (2.01 and later)
work correctly with Windows Me.  Failure symptoms may include
system lock-ups, loss of the mouse and/or keyboard, a slow,
unresponsive system, or a blue-screen "fatal error" condition.
To avoid these errors, please upgrade the driver to version
2.01 or newer.  These drivers are available on IBM's Web site
at http://www.ibm.com/support.

This made me realize I installed a new mouse right before all these problems began.  I did indeed change the driver.  I've switched it back to the original and now, no problems.  How retarded is that?   All over a mouse.

[Smack]

Feed it to the cat...