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Stupid Reboots...

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daigster

Registered
Joined
Jan 28, 2003
Location
Canada
Okay, I'm totally gettin tired of these reboots i suffer. I'll be sittin here playing NHL 2003, Tiger 2003, or chatting, surfing, basically just having the system on. Then randomly a few times a day, it just reboots in the middle of doing anything. When xp starts up again, and error report shows up having something to say about a "mini-dump" error, and xml or something like that. I'll have to reboot and perhaps it'll show up again...

I've used to have a msi board, and that ran solid, and now i'm just choked....If i could find out what this mini-dump crap is, i might be able to narrow it down, but help me out...I've did searches and cant find anything.

Anyone else have this problem? What is it?
 
Of all of the thousands of things that could be wrong, there are two main suspects when it comes to random reboots; power supply, and memory.
From the dump error you're describing, I would suspect memory first, especially if your voltage levels are reading normal, or near it.
Do you have multiple sticks of RAM? Can you try them one at a time?
If only one, can you try a different slot?
You might try Memtest86.
 
I was just looking at Asus Probe, at the voltage indicators...The strange thing it on the 5V line, it jumps up and down...Like i mean the line is totally squiggly...Probe says its at 4.865 volts...Is that too low and shouldnt the line be straight, more consistent? As far as i know, doesnt the 5v line control alot?

PS. I'm using the Antec 300 PSU that came with the Antec SX830 that i'm using. Got another Enermax 350 sittin around...What do you think? Thanks
 
4.86 is a little low, and if it dips only a little lower you may see a shutdown/reboot. My Heroichi 350 watt couldn't take the load of my XP1600+ being overclocked to 1.8 MHz, and was dropping 4.84 consistently, and then dipping a little lower, precipitating a reboot. To live with it, I dropped my overclock down a bit (which brought the +5 back up), but a Sparkle 400 watt PSU cured it.

So if you suspect low voltage, drop down to stock if you are overclocked, see if that cures it. And/or try the other PSU.

My combination is power hungry, even with my 400 watt, the +5 runs at 4.92 while running Folding at Home. I might just have to get in there and tweak the pots a little. :D
 
Just switched from the Antec300 psu to the Enermax 350. The 5v rail is more consistent, and is running a bit higher then the antec, so i guess i'll stick with that. 4.972V Now as the antec was 4.892, but it was like dropping after every few secs, and now, the line on asus probe is straight and doesnt drop.

Now, next, i'm wondering bout ram settings. As said before i have generic pc2100 and am not overclocking anything. In the bios i have the mem settings at optimal. The numbers are 6-3-3-2.5T. Are these alright settings for optimal in the bios. And if i were to lower that speed what would you think i could lower them too. Dont know much bout ram timings. Thanks
 
For performance, you want them (RAM settings) as fast as possible, but not so high that you sacrifice stability. Raising the RAM voltage can help you run fast settings, but I wouldn't recommend anything over 2.8 volts. Some people go higher, but at the risk of frying their RAM.
I would start with slower settings until you are sure that the reboot problem is over.
Once you have a stable baseline to work with, then I would experiment with faster timing. See what it will do with stock voltage, and then see if raising it helps.
Don't assume you need high voltage. I replaced some Kingmax PC2700 with some Kingston HyperX. (much better) I started to freak out, because it wouldn't boot to Windows. It turned out that I had set the cheaper memory to 2.8 volts to max out the timings, and ifoolishly left the voltage high when I put in the new memory.
The quality Kingston didn't like the high voltage, and was crashing because of it. I dropped it to 2.6, and it worked great.

The best advice I have is to try to be patient, and make one change at a time.
 
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