XP Rebooting by itself.....

[MacGyver]

I have XP home edition on 2 of my computers that I just rebuilt..for some reason it reboots by itself every once in a while....Has anybody seen this or know how to deal with it?
thanks.

[moneoa]

I have XP home edition on 2 of my computers that I just rebuilt..for some reason it reboots by itself every once in a while....Has anybody seen this or know how to deal with it?
thanks.Blaster worm does this, random rebooting.
Get the tool from MS

[mountain_rage]

Ive had this happen on a few computers ive built, If its the blasterworm theres ways to remove it and disconnect it from the internet. If your using norton ghost your ghost may have just failed. I had that happen before. If you dont know what norton ghost is then thats not your problem. Other then that maybe you have a short in your mobo or your reset switch is screwed up

[SanDiegoKid]

Take your pick of causes.

Bad memory or a failing power supply can cause it too.

[MacGyver]

Im almost positive I dont have the blaster worm....I have AVG virus, and I scan frequently and Im not finding any virus/worms....The power supply is a brand new 600W supply, and i have a gig and a half of ram...

[moneoa]

Im almost positive I dont have the blaster worm....I have AVG virus, and I scan frequently and Im not finding any virus/worms....The power supply is a brand new 600W supply, and i have a gig and a half of ram...
If it's corrupted it matters not how much you have it will just be goofy

http://www.memtest.org/

use what they offer here to determine if your ram is bad and or corrupt

[The Hunter]

Just to see if its blaster, do the old 3 finger salute, IE controll, alt, delete, and check processes. if you have blaster it will show up there, and you can disable it, and then get a removal tool, and apply it. Hope this helps.

[zaphodiv]

Does this only happen when you have filesharing programs running?

Turn off control panel, system, advanced, startup and recovery, automatically reboot.

You will probably get a black screen of death that tells you which DLL crashed.
You may need to buy a new network card with a non-buggy driver or find a new driver for your USB modem.

[MacGyver]

No it happens at random times, it dosent seem to have anything to do if filesharing programs are running or not.... thanks for the responses...

[The Hunter]

This may be of some help.
Random Reboot
Right Click on My Computer
Click Properties
Select the Advanced tab
Click the Settings button under Startup and Recovery
Remove the check from the Automatically Restart checkbox

[mountain_rage]

You could try running your machine in safe mode for a bit see if it does it in there then you can rule out software reasons. If you dont know how to get into safe mode hit f8 just before windows boots up.

[MacGyver]

Im trying disabling the "automatic restart" box....its set like that now....Ill let you all know if this is working or not....

[MacGyver]

Well now instead of rebooting it just gives me an error and then I have to restart the computer manually...It dosent say any specific DLL crashed...

[The Hunter]

This is something else to check.
Next time it happens write down what time it is. Go to your control panel and open up administrative tools. Go to the event viewer. you will see 3 options. Open up Application Error Records, and look for the time of the reboot. Is there a red X error or Yellow warning sign. If so double click on it and see what it says. Then go to System Error Records and do the same thing. Then comeback here and post what you found and we'll see what we can do to help you figure it out.

[MPXX]

It could also be your motherboard if there is nothing wrong software wise. Especially if your motheboard has blacklisted capacitors on it that are cheap, it can lead to random restarts and even kill ure motherboard completely.
Check the caps on your motherboard and see if any of them are bulging at the top (epecially the ones around the CPU). If u do see a bulge, or the cap is leaking some oze (electrolyte) then ure caps are faulty and are about to dry up or worse explode...lol
This is only if there's no software problem and these random restarts are hardware fault.
You can check more info at http://www.badcaps.net for the blacklist, and other info about faulty capacitors.
Even if ure motherboard is not having problems, I recommend everyone to check their caps.
I have already lost a motherboard to faulty G-Luxon caps :(

[MacGyver]

It could also be your motherboard if there is nothing wrong software wise. Especially if your motheboard has blacklisted capacitors on it that are cheap, it can lead to random restarts and even kill ure motherboard completely.
Check the caps on your motherboard and see if any of them are bulging at the top (epecially the ones around the CPU). If u do see a bulge, or the cap is leaking some oze (electrolyte) then ure caps are faulty and are about to dry up or worse explode...lol
This is only if there's no software problem and these random restarts are hardware fault.
You can check more info at http://www.badcaps.net for the blacklist, and other info about faulty capacitors.
Even if ure motherboard is not having problems, I recommend everyone to check their caps.
I have already lost a motherboard to faulty G-Luxon caps :(

no this is not the prob at all..its a brand new pentium board, everything looks fine inside.

[Krell]

Aaarrrrg . .. you install XP . . . no Service packs, no mention of firewalls, and instead of SP2 where you GET the firewall turned on by default, youre chasing PSU myths, and faulty capacitors.

I bet Messenger Service is running too.

*bangs head*

Somebody . . . ANYBODY . ..see the big picture here.




.

[MacGyver]

Aaarrrrg . .. you install XP . . . no Service packs, no mention of firewalls, and instead of SP2 where you GET the firewall turned on by default, youre chasing PSU myths, and faulty capacitors.

I bet Messenger Service is running too.

*bangs head*

Somebody . . . ANYBODY . ..see the big picture here.

.

Well, I do not want sp2, I do run zone alarm as my firewall...messenger service is NOT running...i know to turn that off....

[MacGyver]

I can even disconnect the cable modem from the computer, same thing happens...so i dont think it has anything to do with firewalls/messanger/internet....

[Mels_Smileys45]

Aaarrrrg . .. you install XP . . . no Service packs, no mention of firewalls, and instead of SP2 where you GET the firewall turned on by default, youre chasing PSU myths, and faulty capacitors.

I bet Messenger Service is running too.

*bangs head*

Somebody . . . ANYBODY . ..see the big picture here.




.


People are doing their best to help. I think everyone has done a fine job.

MacGyver, you should follow Hunters last post.

I just gor rid of a virus that was doing the same shit. I think I'm out of the woods anyway. Back to filesharing

[MacGyver]

This is the error code i get when windows comes back up.....

BCCode : 1000008e BCP1 : C0000005 BCP2 : 805384CC BCP3 : AD90EAEC
BCP4 : 00000000 OSVer : 5_1_2600 SP : 1_0 Product : 768_1

[MacGyver]

anyone understand that error code?

[RACKnRAIL]

I would bet it's either ram, motherboard or power supply as mentioned. I had the same thing happen to me in the recent past. The first machine was the motherboard had capacitors that had blown up and the other was defective memory. The end result was the same...reboots for no reason with blue screen of death.

Perhaps a repair may be worth a try or scannow sfc.

http://www.updatexp.com/scannow-sfc.html

[infringer]

Your cooling and power supply cooling and current are things to check with this be sure that all your internal fans and case fans are clean of dust ...

-infringer-

[cpugeniusmv]

I do not want sp2
why not?

the information you posted from the BSOD wasn't enough...there's usually some near-english somewhere around the top...something like IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL...

[infringer]

I dunno why many people think that SP2 is the devil really it is not all that bad to tell the truth I have ran quite well actually better with its install...

-infringer-

[earthsfate]

maybe your cpu is too hot

[Gamer8585]

Even if its not bad caps the motherboard may still have a glitch in it. I once had to replace my motherboard because I 'F'ed up my first one (alcohol was involved). So I ordered a new one from Gateway because my PC was still under warenty.
Anyway, a few months after I installed it my computer started acting up, auto restarting, and eventualy it said some windows .dll was missing after I booted it up, and I couldn't even get into windows. I had to reinstall windows just to try to fix the problem. I tried eveything , different settings, changing the memory, etc. But it still errored, restarted, and eventualy nessitated the reinstall (and subsequent patching) of windows and other software.
After abouty a year of this I eventualy took it to get serviced, and the guy their was confued about what the F**k was going on untill he ran some tests on the board, and lo and behold, the board was just messed up (he guessed it was from some static, but wasn't sure).
Anyway what I am trying to say is don't rule anything out untill the problem is fixed.

[ThePillarOfAutumn]

Bad Memory :ass Ive been thier thanks to GEIL for thier lifetime warranty _ replaced it for free . no reboots since then :upside

[Mels_Smileys45]

Alot of people think its a memory problem. Do you think you could have fried it when you put it in?


no this is not the prob at all..its a brand new pentium board, everything looks fine inside.

Parts can be brand new and still be defective. You can't tell by just gazing

[MacGyver]

Alot of people think its a memory problem. Do you think you could have fried it when you put it in?

Parts can be brand new and still be defective. You can't tell by just gazing

I checked the ram for about 2 hours with a program called MEMTEST.....everything checked fine....I think it might be related to zone alarm 3.0 that Im running. When I check the reports for the sytem under administrative tools it has an error of "true vector" (which i think is part of zone alarm). These errors are the same time that the computer is rebooting. Im going to try today not running zone alarm and see how it goes....anyone reccomend a good firewall I can get thats easy to use that might work better if it is indeed zone alarm?

[Mels_Smileys45]

Glad to see you did more than just gaze! lol


Good luck, I know this sort of thing can be a bitch

[mfgbypooter]

Try Sygate's free Personal Firewall.

http://smb.sygate.com/download_buy.htm

[MacGyver]

It dosent matter if its a free firewall...what do you think is the best? what about blackice?

[mfgbypooter]

http://www.firewallguide.com/software.htm

A firewall is only as good as the user behind it.

[Star Guitar]

I've spent hours on an errily similar problem. My boss has a brand New Sony Vaio that does the exact same thing. I had already tried everything all of you listed, sans the Memtest and the autoreboot trick, which I'll recommend to him later. For the life of me I couldn't tell what the problem was, and still can't. I'm going to subscribe to this thread and I'll post any new info I may find.

[Star Guitar]

My boss called sony and they had him enter msconfig.exe and remove some of the startup programs. The trouble went away. Unfortunately, he doesn't remember what they asked him to stop, and he gers a dll error whenever he tries to enter a login screen on the internet. Isapi.dll or something. I didn't get a chance to fix that one yet. I'll try to find out more.

[Mars Bar]

I tried installing a fresh copy of Windows on my PC, but unless I had SP2 installed it would crash. And could I heck find the cause, after MUCH searching on Google. Try using SP2 BEFORE you connect to the net. This may fix the laptop at the very least.