win xp shuts down when capturing

[loriandrick]

When ever i captures video from my dv camera, win xp restarts after about 30 seconds of capturing.

it happens in MGI videowave 5.0. or Pinnacle Studio 7
my system is pIII 667, 128MB Ram( I know it's not enough) 30G harddrive, 32M video card, Pyro BasicDV firewire card.

This is very annoying . I have to get my videos transfered to cd.


Any help will be appreciated.

[Savant]

I think you are overheating your CPU because you have it overclocked. Try a program like MBM5 and see if that can tell you how hot you are getting. Spontaneous reboots/shutdown can be heat related.

http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

Regards,

Savant

[loriandrick]

I am not overclocking my cpu. I tried it before and the warning buzzer sounded so i decided not to do it again. I will try that prog you said to see what the temperature is when capturing. I also notice that when i close my computer room door while the computer is running it gets very warm in the room. How can so much heat come from my computer. What is the easiest way to cool it down.

[Savant]

Unfortunately there is no easy way to cool the computer that doesn't involve opening it up and installing more fans. If your room does get hot with it on, then it may be overheating, but if it is not overclocked then it shouldn't be.

Perhaps the CPU or Power Supply fan is dying. When you put your hand over the exhaust of the computer, is the air strong or does it just dribble out?

Anyway, test the CPU temp, and if you are nearing 50C with your machine, a new cpu heat sink/fan may be in order.

Regards,

Savant

[Betamax]

Unfortunately there is no easy way to cool the computer that doesn't involve opening it up and installing more fans. If your room does get hot with it on, then it may be overheating, but if it is not overclocked then it shouldn't be.

I agree, but then again I won't.

The fans of my system aren't dying (still running quiet fast). I've got a special coolerblock for Ghz-CPU's and even added an extra fan, but still having trouble with overheated CPU (and even from overheated chipsets!).
Somewhere I can figure it out myself, while the room where the PC is located is currently very hot (damn that summer!) and I can't move the PC while all my rooms at my apartment are hot (the coolest place is the bathroom, but I can't locate the PC there, can I?).

So now I'm using a very drastic solution, that actually works great :
I srewed the system open, opened the case for 1 third and put the fan (that actually is meant to cool my self in the living room) in front of this opening... drasticly, I know, but it seems to be working.

[Betamax]

it happens in MGI videowave 5.0. or Pinnacle Studio 7
my system is pIII 667, 128MB Ram( I know it's not enough) 30G harddrive, 32M video card, Pyro BasicDV firewire card.

Your sytem is the problem.
Perhaps the speed is okay, but you should have at least 256MB of RAM in your system (aspecially when you're using xp or w2k).
I saw you've got only 1 disk : for video you should have at least 2, where your video-disk is at a complete seperate IDE-controller (so the disk where the OS is installed shouldn't be connected to the same cable of your video-disk) - Even if you think about creating an extra partition at your current (OS-) disk won't help, you need to have a seperate disk.
Also check that the video-disk has the 'using DMA'-setting to 'enabled' and that your video-disk is formated in NTFS (and NOT in FAT or FAT32).

Before capturing, close everything (so nothing is at the taskbar 'opened' except your capture-software).
While capturing, leave your system as is - every interaction (even from the screensaver or powersaver) is enough to fail the capturing, in the worse case to crash your system.
If you've got extra services (like a website or stuff that weren't there when you first installed windows) stop them all.
Be sure, if you've got an a4us soft, you close it.

Conclusion : update your system and verify that your system is with nothing occupied while the capturing is in progress.
Sometimes, if you're sure nothing is loaded/started and it still don't work, it would help to do a REBOOT just before capturing so all resources are realy free (if you've got some 'nasty' programs that does so called 'memory-leaks' - like incorrect written software mostly does) that's enough to have the kind of problems you claim to have.

[Bel]

My money is on the power supply not being strong enough. Even if it once was working fine, as they get older especially if you're using close to their max wattage they get less reliable. I would go get yourself a power supply with at least 400 watts and see if that doesn't solve your problem.

Although everything Betamax said is true, this would not cause a spontaneous reboot. The worst thing that would happen could be a blue screen crash, which would then reboot computer after the memory dump (assuming you are using the default xp settings). The other thing it might be is power from the wall browning out, but if it happens every time you're capturing it probably means you're drawing too much power from your power supply, it can't keep up so the computer dies and reboots. I had the same problem once, and swapping out the power supply made it never happen again. Good luck.