Intermittent desktop problem
 

Hi,

Wonder if ppl could chip in with ideas please, bit of a strange one this;

AMD64 3000+
SiS mobo
512MB ram pc3200
200gb seagate ata100 IDE HDD
ATi 9250

Oldman's PC is playing up :brickwall It boots fine, RAM tested out ok overnight, PSU tested with a power tester, thats ok. Put a new HDD in it last tonight as well to rule that out.

But the problem still persists. After about 5-10mins use or sometimes straight after the XPSP2 login prompt, and sometimes when its loading the desktop, the PC just resets itself. Sometimes it will boot normally, and you can use it for 8hrs straight with no issue. When it does reboot there is no BSOD, no other error, almost as if the power has been cut. But as mentioned the PSU is ok according to the tester. And then on reboot it will either start normally or keep resetting itself. It's very intermittent.

Also I can pretty much make it reset itself on demand, when I plug any USB devices in, which again points to the PSU, but I'm not sure as the tester says it's fine :s i.e all rails are ok.

Any other ideas on what it could be pls chaps, dry joint, faulty USB hub/faulty mobo maybe?

I'm thinking of taking it to a repair shop, because I've tried pretty much everything that normally fixes these things, and I don't want to splash out on a new PSU to find the problem is still there.

Can you get your hands on a spare PSU for just a few hours? If you can make it do a reboot by plugging in USB devices it should be a quick test.

It does sounds power or mobo related from what you say. Also, to eliminate one of the many many strange windows bugs, do a fresh install of XP. You don't have to kill his current setup, just make a new partition and drop XP onto that, see if that makes it stable.

Check out the power cable to the psu, I had the same problem and it turned out to be a broken wire:)

Ah of course, the simplest of things have been overlooked, thanks.

Luminous thx, no spare PSU unfortunately though. Hopefully it will just be the above.

if you have loads of usb devices hanging of the pc remove them and try again ( as said )

it sounds very much like the PSU can't supply enough power

Could always be a overheating CPU due to a faulty CPU cooling fan/dodgy Heatsink connection to the CPU. Or even the RAM timings are out in the BIOS causing the rebooting effect.

Ok only 2 usb devices connected, so it's not too many. They're only using about 5ma each.

New power cable made no difference.
CPU/system temps are low (<40C) so fine.
RAM timings are auto in bios and correct. Did an 8hr memtest on the dimms, no errors either.

Schoolboy error but I didn't realise his error dump was set to automatically reboot the PC, so it has all this time actually being BSODing. The errors are either stop A,E or the infamous IRQL not < or = to.

Anyway I just took it all apart (again) and put the older HDD back in, USB devices are now not causing it to reset. So maybe there was a bad connection on the USB to front port connectors, which was in turn tripping the ports on the back of the PC, or another bad connection, not sure we will see.

I reckon its PSU or mobo if the problem continues, who knows :)

Thx for the ideas so far.

Edit: Btw I did a fresh XP install to, before replacing the old HDD, and it BSOD'd once there to. But it did manage to complete succesfully on reboot, only to crash again later on. But the USB devices did not reset it on that fresh install.

you checked the event log ?

Have you turned of the restart after sytem failure option (this will give you a blue screen error) ??

Automatic Restart - How to Disable the Automatic Restart on System Failure in Windows XP

Yeh its off now mate, I mentioned that in my previous post.

What other devices are connected inside the PC? Could it be a faulty adapter card?

Nothing else installed apart from AGP gfx card, which seems to be fine.

Left the PSU connected to the tester overnight, and there were no errors. I managed to source an old PSU as well (which was ok), and the problem persisted with that installed to.

So I'm going to knock it on the head and advise him to get a new base system from Dell or something, as this must be a mobo issue.

Thx for all your advice thou guys.

BIOS update, I had the same issue, it could be the RAM or hard drvie that the BIOS version doesnt like, do a BIOS flash and see if that sorts it !!

Sorry if the problem has been found I didnt read the replies

Nah wont be the bios mate, his PC was working perfectly for about 4yrs before this happened :)

BSODs are usually memory-related, no matter what the error message. Unless they aren't. And don't rely on MemTest - in my experience it misses a lot of low-level errors. I'd start by dropping the RAM settings a notch if BIOS allows this. If the machine has two sticks of RAM, try each in it's own for a few days.

But the IRQ_NOT_LESS etc error can often be a CPU problem. Next I'd try raising the CPU voltage a notch or two.


M

It won't run for more than 5-10mins, nm days :) I've tried those things already though, but thx.

:wonder: didnt read that... my bad :thumb: