hmm... very strange reboot problem

H

horse

Vault Fossil
Orderite
has appeared at some time in the past, then everything was ok for half a year, and now it happened again

totally unpredictable and, sadly, untraceable:

for no reason whatsoever the computer reboots. this does not happen often, maybe 1 or 2 times per day (approximately). cant tell you exactly how often, there are days when it runs like a volkswagen... but returning from my holidays the pc greeted me with a "fcuk yu0" and didnt boot at all for some 20 times...

the pc is clean, no lint/dust, all fans running, no high temperatures anywhere. it has run for hours and even days when unploading large databases without any problems. there is NOTHING to see in the event viewer (eventvwr.msc), no BSOD messages etc (which is not too surprising since it reboots to bios. cmos battery is fresh, bios is flashed 2 months ago.

i can live with that... BUT: sometimes it is totally impossible to get it running. i press the ON button, monitor stays in standby, but the system seems to be running and booting (i have to press the ON button for 4 seconds to switch it off). doesnt matter which monitor i use, no signal. i keep repeating these bootups up to 20 or 30 times to no avail. after a while, it boots normal and everything is fine. i have not the slightet clue what the hell is going on there.

i suspect the PSU, but that does not make any sense either, because it runs days on end without any problem. do you have any idea what might be wrong? i can post system specs etc, but it appears with a randomness that just baffles me. any idea? thanks in advance

horstomat
 
It's most probably the RAM. If it does not get enough power you'll get random errors when it tries to allocate more RAM than it can handle. You can solve the issue by changing stuff in the BIOS.

Or it's the pr0n. It's gods way of telling you to stop.
 
1. Check the capacitors on the MB: Are they bloated or have dielectric oozing from some of them?
2. Reseat power cables, RAM, remove modem (Possible lightning damage), and CPU(If you're comfortable doing that - 99.9% of the time, it doesn't make a difference).
3. When it successfully boots, use memtest
4. Swap PS with another one(Borrow a friend's).

I would imagine it's either the MB or PS. Memory rarely goes bad, at least compared to those two parts.
Sporadic problems are a bitch to fix sometimes. Good luck.

P.S. It's not going to be the HD. If you have a modem, make sure to inspect it. Most people don't surge protect their phone lines, leading to lightning damage that can fry the modem + MB.

EDIT:
Missed the part about it staying on for days.. That's pretty weird. Video card issue, perhaps. Try swapping that out first if you get a chance. My XFX 7800GTX would run for days at a time, but as soon as I would play a game, it'd crash. Ended up being faulty and I got a 8800GS as a replacement(I love XFX).
 
thanks, thats detailed man

1. mb looks just fine, maybe the cleanest mb i have ever possessed, all parts are just like they should be
2. have done that several times, to no avail
3. i have done a memtest a few months ago, after it had its first series of, dunno, hissy fits, half an hour, went well, swapped slots etc. doesnt seem to be the problem, ill do that again nonetheless
4. no friends nearby, but i think ill buy a 500+w psu sooner or later

ya, i suspect its the psu... but, right now, the pc runs for some 5+ hours straight with no problem at all. i have cable, and the network cable is directly connected to the motorola modem, i gave the router away (i HATE routers). i live in an old house in the middle of duesseldorf, so i suspected some power surges or decreases, but all other devices work ok all the time, and generally the german power companies are extremely reliable (and expensive), so i can rule that out too (i guess)

the hd seems to be fully ok, too. i could live with errors, but it sucks to not know why that shit happens and its total unpredictability. it must be magic, possibly porn magic with tentacles and nazi midgets.

edit: i can edit too! i have an onboard nvidia 5160, and stalker etc run hours on end with no problem at all (will be swapped to 8800gt in a few days(the 5160, not stalker)) . today, i had 2 crashes in the morning, one when firing up foobar2000 (mp3), the other one on media player classic (both to bios, no bsod, so no error in event viewer). right now, both run perfectly fine. so no driver thing. OR, perhaps, the onboard sound card misfires sometimes. i HATE it that i cant see why it crashes. it crashes so fast windows cant log shit.
 
Yeah, it SEEMS like a power problem(No BSOD yet reboots, hard time powering up, crashes regardless of program use).

That pretty much leaves the MB and PS. As I think of more things, I'll keep you updated.
 
Mine has done that a few times. It was a catastrophic driver and codec conflict. I had a few broken sound codecs and my AC'97 drivers were really old.

After removing and reinstalling updated drivers, uninstalling codec pack, installing a new codec pack, haven't had the problem except for old games that have a problem with newer hardware.

Since my problem was pretty consistant crashing during certain events, and yours isn't, I would say it's either PSU or video card. Is it overclocked?
 
hmm it IS amazing. i fired it up in the morning (booted in the first try without any hiccups), started orthos (ram stress test), that RTHDRIBL graphics test (windowed), and played my some mp3 simultaneously while running a stalker video fullscreen. returned after 2 hours, everything is just fine, no errors or anything.

i think i really have to check if there are some power instabilities in this old house. ill ask some neighbors... otherwise, it is totally inexplicable. i can rule software issues out, i guess, i did a complete new xp install 1 week prior to my holiday (ie 3 weeks ago), and its still quite clean. k-lite codec is the only thing that could have some issues, i tended to hate codec packs of early because of their instability or incompatibility, but i also hate searching for new media splitters and audio codecs for every goddamn video snippet.
 
horst said:
i can live with that... BUT: sometimes it is totally impossible to get it running. i press the ON button, monitor stays in standby, but the system seems to be running and booting (i have to press the ON button for 4 seconds to switch it off). doesnt matter which monitor i use, no signal. i keep repeating these bootups up to 20 or 30 times to no avail. after a while, it boots normal and everything is fine. i have not the slightet clue what the hell is going on there.
Click to expand...

This is the part that almost guarantees a sporadic PS or MB, but it could still possibly be the video card, memory or CPU. Does it post beep? How many times? Do you have integrated video port on your MB that you can test without the video card in? It could possibly be a bad processor, but in the 4 years I've worked at a computer repair shop, I have literally seen less than 5 bad chips.

Software and the HD can be tossed out as the problem - software and the HD wouldn't cause the booting problems. The monitor would still display at least the boot-up process and CMOS screen.
 
I'd have to agree with the general consensus here: it's either the PSU or motherboard. More likely the PSU. A PSU that's going bad can cause exactly the symptoms you're describing, and it's not unusual for it to be sporadic running fine one moment, and next to impossible to even get to the POST the next. In fact, I had the exact same sort of problem not too long ago with my old rig.

Have you checked the outputs on the PSU rails (either through the BIOS, a program such as Everest, or, if you have the know-how and equipment, using a multimeter)? With mine, the 5V rail was only outputting a little over 4V, which can definitely cause problems.
 
i have thought about multimetering, there are good how-tos on the net, doesnt seem to be too time-consuming. sadly, i dont have a multimeter, but they come cheap. i might do that in a few days, a friend of mine is electrician, sadly hes in his holiday for 2 weeks, that bastard. another question: do psus have normed sizes? my 400w looks kinda small (asus midi tower). and WHY for fucks sake do psu engineers put their labels on the EXACT fucking side of the psu where you have to dismantle your whole pc to read it? fuckers!

@everest: i only found a demo version which looks a bit too big. googling for some psu-specific software meters. iirc, sisofts sandra could do that.

edit: found one... SIV. http://rh-software.com/ nice tool, but the strangest GUI i have ever seen.

Sensor ITE IT8716F-D MB 25.0°C I/O +0.00 PSU +4.73 +11.52 -7.71 -14.91 Fans 1,781 1,336 0

looks kinda ok to me, still in the norm, or is it?
 
horst said:
PSU +4.73 +11.52 -7.71 -14.91
Click to expand...
euhm, wtf? are those voltages?

that should be 3.3V, 5V and 12V lines... diverting more than 0.5V from that = big trouble.

though you should take software readouts with a grain of salt. they're never correct. only a multimeter knows for sure. :)
 
I know this is pretty obvious, but did you clean and check the fan for the psu for proper functioning?
 
yarr, first thing i did was cleaning up everything

vAUX is 3.14 volt. somehow my firefox fuxxors around, i cant upload to imageshack and nma is down on firefox. wth? i hate IE. if it worked, i would upload the whole sensor screen EDIT ahhh its working! its working!


[Sensors] <- SIV - System Information Viewer V3.33 HORST::Alex

ITE IT8716F-D ASUS M2NPV-VM Chip ID: 87160100 (4) LPC: 002E Port: 0295 0296 Maker: 1000 Model: 1090 IDs: FFFF 0090 00FF 0012 00FF

Temperatures Current raw and offset Hysteresis raw Maximum raw Beep Sensor config

Sensor 1 37.0°C 0x2500 0x0000 -1.0°C 0xFF00 -1.0°C 0xFF00 [_] Processor Diode 0x03
Sensor 2 40.0°C 0x2800 0x0000 -1.0°C 0xFF00 -1.0°C 0xFF00 [_] Thermistor 0x00
Sensor 3 25.0°C 0x1900 0x0000 -1.0°C 0xFF00 -1.0°C 0xFF00 [_] Thermistor 0x00

Fan Description Current raw Minimum raw Divisor 0x0709 Beep Clock 22KHz 0x0031

Fan 1 RPM 2,149 0x013A 3,245 0x00D0 2.0 0x01 (0) [Y] 0x47CF
Fan 2 RPM 1,483 0x01C7 3,245 0x00D0 2.0 0x01 (0) [Y] 0xFFFF
Fan 3 RPM 0 0xFFFF 10 0xFFFF 2.0 0x01 (0) [_]

Vcore 0x007F Current raw Minimum raw Maximum raw Beep Generic Mode config

Vcore CPU-0 1.25 0x48 (1.15) 1.25 0xFF (4.08) 1.25 0xFF (4.08) [Y] CPU VID 0x00
Vaux 3.14 0xC4 (3.14) 4.08 0xFF (4.08) 4.08 0xFF (4.08) [Y]
I/O +3.3 0.00 0x00 (0.00) 4.08 0xFF (4.08) 4.08 0xFF (4.08) [Y] 16mV
PSU +5 4.73 0xB0 (2.82) 6.85 0xFF (4.08) 6.85 0xFF (4.08) [Y]
PSU +12 11.52 0xB4 (2.88) 16.32 0xFF (4.08) 16.32 0xFF (4.08) [Y]
PSU -12 -14.91 0x00 (0.00) 6.07 0xFF (4.08) 6.07 0xFF (4.08) [Y]
PSU -5 -7.71 0x00 (0.00) 5.11 0xFF (4.08) 5.11 0xFF (4.08) [Y]
PSU 5VSB 4.65 0xAD (2.77) 6.85 0xFF (4.08) 6.85 0xFF (4.08) [Y]
PSU VBAT 2.88 0xB4 (2.88) 0.00 0x00 (0.00) 0.00 0x00 (0.00) [_]

[ OK ] [ Copy ] [System] [Machine] [Sensors] [USB Bus] [Network] [Serial] [ SMART] [Volumes] [Drives] [PCI Bus] [Devices]


clipboard01cg7.jpg
 
horst said:
PSU -12 -14.91 0x00 (0.00) 6.07 0xFF (4.08) 6.07 0xFF (4.08) [Y]
PSU -5 -7.71 0x00 (0.00) 5.11 0xFF (4.08) 5.11 0xFF (4.08) [Y]
Click to expand...
that doesn't look too good, tbfh.

take the same screenshot when the system is idle and then again when the system is under heavy load (like run 3Dmark & SuperPi at the same time).
 
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