Machine reboots itself...

[The Fred]

Happens to me every couple of days or so..
It just reboots itself.
I hear the drives power down and back up and the display goes black just as if I had pressed down on the reset button. Where is this kind of thing logged? Nothing, nothing! will make you want to throw a machine through the wall like a random reboot.

No BSOD or anything that I know of

[oldandinthe way]

Your system powers off under software control, so problems as well as hardware problems are possible. The reset button on modern machines is read by software and the power down is not directly connected to the button.

For a start I would do a virus scan and an antispyware scan. I would then check the event logs for clues.

Then if I was sure the system was truly clean I would begin to troubleshoot the hardware.

[The Fred]

No spyware or virus detected, have checked the voltages and all of that.. not sure what the story is

[classfour]

Possession?

No, Likely overheated components if "olds" input doesn't solve it.

open and leave off one side of the case: if the machine runs without a problem - it's time to start cleaning out dust, etc.

test power supply
check the fan
if brave, check the cpu paste - clean, then re-apply
reseat the memory
reseat all pci and agp cards on mobo
strip the mobo back to the mobo, ram and essential drives - remove modem, extra hdds dvd etc.

If she boots and runs, install one part at a time - give it time to heat up. Hopefully the bad component will reveal itself.

[The Fred]

I have a huge monster case with 5 exhaust and three intake fans.. so the system stays really very cool.. the thermal paste is the best you can buy, I think, and properly applied, overheating or overvolting was the first thing I looked for, good thinking though! I'm seriously doubting a hardware issue since it ran stable and fine for a long long time when I was running windows 2000

[redwudz]

That makes it hard to diagnose when it happens at random. A few things to try:

Boot in 'Safe Mode' and see if that helps. That disables some drivers and simplifies troubleshooting.
Run Memtest86 on your memory: http://www.memtest86.com/
Substitute your video card with another
Unplug all drives except your boot drive and all cards except the video card.
You've probably already done this, but run CHKDSK on your boot drive.
You can also try booting with a Bart PE disc or a bootable Linux distro. That would eliminate all software and drivers as a source of the problem. You can even unplug your boot drive to take it out of the picture.

If still no go, maybe a flaky power supply.

Then all that's left is the CPU or the motherboard.

[cdb]

Same thing used to happen to me at work - totally random reboots, several times a day, then not again for a few days. Drove me nuts and I.T. could never figure it out.

Then I learned that there was a setting in the BIOS setup that determined whether the machine rebooted when certain types of errors occurred. It was in response to software errors, not overheating or something truly critical like that.

Don't remember what the setting was named, but it was pretty clear when I read it. Changed the setting and the problem went away.

[The Fred]

That's what makes it such a $($(# to diag, the rarity of the issue.. the power supply is pretty solid and new, voltages are showing up alright..

I forgot all about that bios setting- I remember that from the old days, something about halting on certain errors? Or, no, that ain't it,
It probably is there somewhere!

I looked at the system logs and couldn't see anything suspicious

[classfour]

Looks like you're down to the one piece at a time approach.

[buttzilla]

Install Mother Board Monitor which is free and check your temp. My computer just recently started shutting down during movie encoding. So I installed MBM to see how high my temp was rising and how fast. I had the bios set to shut down at 176 degrees. Thats what it was doing. Where I'm at its hitting the 80's now and the old computer started running hot. I cleaned all the dust and that didnt help much. So i took the heatsink off and removed the chip and cleaned the old dried heatsink compound with a razor and alcohol and replaced it with some new artic silver and that did the trick. Most people dont realize the old compoud will harden and drie up so it good to renew it once and a while.

[The Fred]

Hell yes, using that Artic Silver sure does help.
Especially if you properly apply it, IE, as you've said- with a blade. You don't even want invisable skin cells on there. And you don't want to use much, if you can see it- it is enough!

I even use the two step cleaning solution I bought from ( I think ) Artic Silver.

The right grease will take 10+C off your CPU.. the Zalman 9700 comes with some good grease too. It ties with the Arctic. The paste in the little jar coming with the Zalman even has a paint brush type thing for easy application (similar to a nail polish bottle)


BUY A ZALMAN 9700!!
THIS STUPID PENTIUM D 930 WOULD NOT EVER RUN COOL UNTIL I GOT THIS. It never would run under 64C at IDLE!! Now I don't break 55 under full 100% load for hours on hours.

[The Fred]

It's big though, the cooler is big, but after going through the retail boxed hsf and two all copper aftermarket coolers.. I'm telling you, buy a Zalman 9700
Buy it right now I tell ya

[The Fred]

And, do not ever buy a Pentium D 930
Not ever, not one time

[buttzilla]

yeah the pentium D's are notorious for running hot. The reason is they just took two regular pentium 4 chips and put them on one die.

[ladyb1998]

i sometime have the same problem. it only occurs when i attemp to plug in a usb device and i hit the case first. those are the days that i have a lot of static electiricty build up in me. carpeted house and a carpted chair don't help either.

[The Fred]

yeah the pentium D's are notorious for running hot. The reason is they just took two regular pentium 4 chips and put them on one die.

That's odd.
This doesn't seem to run alot faster than my old cpu..
PD 930 / 3.0x2 / 800mhz / 2x2 (775)
P4 / 3.0E / 800mhz / 2x1 (478)

I had one gigabyte of mushkin and now have two gigabytes of corsair

Still, everything uses the heck out of the paging file (not the processors fault)


Now I hear big hoopla about the Core2 DUO well heck the Pentium D moniker was sold to me as "dual core" and now they make it sound like Core2 is "true dual core" and mine ain't. The core2 "does more work per clock cycle" just like AMD use to claim.
If I believed it would be worth it, in a few months I'd buy a "quad core"
But if they con me again I'll be really mad with them
Just like when I bought the first P4 out, what a horrible processor.


I spent half the price of the PD CPU getting it to run within temp specs,
And pretty much was conned into buying it

[SingSing]

Dell desktop system with dual core CPU uses liquid cool.

[buttzilla]

The new Duo cores chips comunicate with each other chip through an interconect chip. The pentium d's comunicated over the fsb. A much slower way to talk to each other. Their already talking an 8 core cpu. Read about it in maximumPC magazine i believe. So buy the time you buy a quad core it will already be outdated. My desktop still runs a Pentium 4 prescot. It runs very hot. I'm way outdated. I need to catch up.