alex4bball

It could also be the timing of the RAM, i.e. CL. Are you running Dual Channel DDR RAM?

I just had these exact problems after I finished building my computer and it came down to the memory and the power supply causing the problems. So, I adjusted the timing in my BIOS for the memory and replaced the power supply.

It could also depend on the components you are running in your computer.

hahn

Is the system restarting without ANY warning whatsoever? No warning messages, nothing. Computer just blips and restarts? If so, I'll bet money that it's a faulty power supply. I had this EXACT same problem happen once with an old AMD K5 system. Drove me nuts as I replaced each component one by one over a period of a month. Finally, the very last thing I tried was the power supply, and suddenly it worked flawlessly. Bad RAM would likely give you some error message before it rebooted.

Besides, it sounds like you've been running it fine for awhile until you added these components in. In my experience, RAM rarely craps out later on. If it's fine to begin with, it's fine for the time that you own your computer. If you have a problem with it, it'll show up in the beginning (unless you do stuff like overclocking or changing the BIOS settings). The power demands of your system may have been pushed passed the limits of your power supply by just these couple of additions.

Also, I think it's unlikely to be overheating because in that case, what I've usually experienced was a freeze-up, not a reboot. My money's on the power supply.

Lateralus

Let me put my vote it, I say it's power supply.

ernestrp

Me to, power supply. My computer worked fine for about 3 years. Then every once in awhile usually in the morning, I would get my email leave to shave, etc. and come back and it was off. Then it started happening like every other day. I replaced the power supply and its worked fine since. Its 5 years old this month!!! Longest I have ever gone on a system and I see no reason now for a new one as it does everything I want it to do and dont play games much anymore except for a few of the several hundred I went through years ago....and an occasional really cheap one I find at Microcenter that still meets my systems specs.

FiveO

We should start a poll on this one and have jonjj7 do what I suggested and replace one first to see what the actual problem is.

I had this happen to my old computer and even after the power supply, fan, mb, hd, etc...was replaced....it was still happening.


Its the ram

Brain Stew

I had this same problem, and the culprit was RAM. My ordeal was documented here:
http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=337585

jonjj7

I think I may start with the power supply. And I think all this rebooting may have corrupted XP because when I right-click to view properties for files and folders nothing comes up. Also various programs have been hanging during install. Its really weird.....

gcribbs

sounds more Ram like to me

icondude

Does not sound like it's a temperature related problem to me, but I still prefer the running it with the cover off test.

If you go over to Fatwallet there are lenghtly discussions on how bad ECS motherboards are, go check them out (might be in a Fry's related thread).

LolaRennt

Everybody has been trying to blame the hardware. I suspect a virus. You say you just installed an ethernet card for DSL, so you basically have broadband right now. This might be enough - if you are not carefull - to get some nasty viruses.

In particular, check your computer for the Welchia virus. This one is known to restart your computer from time to time, which is exactly your problem.

Let us know how things go.

jonjj7

It must have been a conflict with the Ethernet card. I took out that card and enabled the onboard Ehternet port. I also moved the sound card to the last PCI slot. Ever since doing this, I have had no troubles. So I guess it was just some weird conflict between the NIC and this ECS motherboard. After the amount of troubles I have had with this board (this isn't the first time it has acted up) I don't think I will ever get another ECS board.

nickdawgy

I am having the same restarting problem now on my new HP system. The only thing I added was a Geforce FX 5200 AGP video card.

Anyway my PC is an Athlon XP 3000+ 512 RAM

I don't think it's overheating because it just happened 2 mintes after I booted it up for the first time today (after it went unused for 8 hours while I was sleeping)

Any ideas?

jonjj7

One thing that was kind of annoying for me was the fact that it would restart without a message. I wasn't aware that XP was set to do that by default until someone here mentioned it. You can turn this off under System Properties > Startup & Recovery. At least then you will see a Stop error, which might give you a better idea of what is going on.

mookiemeister

My Dell also reboot randomly once in a long while. It has not done this frequently enough to be annoying. But has done it a few times already in my 1+ year of ownership. I just shrug it off since I'm not sure what could be the cause of the reboot. In one case, I wasn't even using it at all. I only realize the reboot when I heard the Window sound when Windows comes up.

hahn

Power supply or RAM seem to be the most common culprits. But you could rule out other causes first, like viruses, with an anti-virus program. aVast! is a free anti-virus program (for 60 days anyhow) and is available on www.download.com. I would also download AdAware (from the same site) and remove the ad software. If that doesn't do it, then buy some RAM and a power supply from a local store which you can return stuff to, and replace each one, one at a time and see if that helps it.

Another thing I thought off nickdawgy as I read your post was that you got an nVidia video card. If I recall, some of their more recent cards tend to have high power requirements. You may want to make sure that your power supply has enough juice for it.

Both of you guys have retail computers. They should be well supported by their manufacturers. You may want to give them a call.

nickdawgy

Yeah, in my old eMachine 2.2ghz celeron 512 RAM I had the PCI version of the Geforce 5200 FX card, but no problems with random restarting.

It only seems to happen when the computer is idle (all 3 restarts have occured this way)

I am not sure what kind of power supply I have but if the eMachine could handle the card, surely this HP can as well?

sivadc

I'm actually also having reboot problems with a computer here at work but I can't find any relevant errors in the xp event viewer. I know driver problems show up there but do hardware errors?

nickdawgy

Mine just had the problem again. Very annoying.

mookiemeister

I'm wondering if the reason my Windows XP reboot is because it encountered some error. In the older version of Windows, when an error is encountered, it displays the infamous blue screen with a dump of values in memory and register. Maybe with the XP, it doesn't do that anymore but instead just reboot?

alex4bball

I had this problem when I first built my box. I found the problem to be a faulty power supply. Although I don't think it was necessarily "faulty" just not powerful enough for what I was running. So, my guess is that it was running fine until you added the new hardware, so it may just not be capable of running everything. I would opt for a higher watt psu and would recommend something from Antec.

hahn

Why not give HP a call? As long as it's under warranty, they should replace it for you if they can't figure out the problem. I'm still betting on the power supply though. Power supplies can go bad even on retail machines. If there's a problem with RAM, it tends to show up from the very beginning, unless you've messed around with it.

nickdawgy

Mine said something about IRQL not less or equal or something or other....

spankasmurf

Oooo...I use to get that one too. Didn't disappear until I got a new motherboard and hard drive. Did a clean install of XP. Now I get "Bad Pool Call..." every now and then. Grrrrrrr...

nickdawgy

Exactly the one I just got...Driver corrupted bad pool or something like that.

2 restarts in about 5 minutes....

nickdawgy

Getting more restarts...

Sometimes bad pool, sometimes IRQ not less or equal, and sometimes no error listed.

I did see this:

stop 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0x8058CE0C, 0xF4741AD0, 0x00000000)

No idea what it means....