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mysterious restarts

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8 replies

by fragtron

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I've got a computer that i don't know where to go with. Once I power it up, it will run up to a couple of hours before resetting itself as if some little gremlin hit the reset button, and then resets again a few times before it gets the chance to start windows. I've checked the event logs under windows xp and it's not picking up any errors and I've eliminated reset switch itself because i've unplugged it and this problem is still occuring. Does anyone know what the cause of this problem is?

8 replies

by oliverboyer

Mate it might be your motherboard's temp might be getting a little too hot, and your system is trying to shutdown/reset itself. Check your bios settings and monitor the temp. Got enough fans in there?
Also your powersupply could be failing, what wattage are you using and what components?

Olie

by fragtron

the machine in question is running a 300w power supply, with a Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz on a Gigabyte GA-8ST667 motherboard, and 256 mb ram.

by oliverboyer

300w is the bare min for running that type of system and if you have more than one HDD and ROM you should really think of going up to 450w
That may also be a cause of the problem.
Was your system's temp ok?

by dbgirl

I'm having a bad day, so please pardon the misread.

In the system properties, check your startup and recovery options. If it is set to automatically reboot on system failure, change it. It is entirely possible that you have something causing a system failure that's making your system reboot.

by fragtron

yeah, the temp seemed to be fine. i'll try another psu and see if that solved the problem. thanks for the help.

by mikel948

Hi,

I have seen this on a number of occassions and about 95% of the time it was due to either a mis-seated or bad RAM chip. Two other possibilities I have seen (especially in XP),

1. Check the ACPI setting in the BIOS. If it is disabed, enable it.

2. Try changing the video driver. I have never seen so many bizarre problems caused by the video driver.

I hope this helps.

ML

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