Completely random reboots...

My mom's machine, Compaq Presario. AthlonXP 3200, 448MB(?) RAM.

Starting today, it will reboot randomly. The Windows error reporting is telling me it's a device driver, but I have not installed anything recently. No messages on restart other than "the system hasd recovered from a serious error". Event Viewer has two Sytem Errors that seem to match when things went south; the error name is ER_KRNLCRASH_LOG. It says that a BSOD occurred, but all that happened was a sudden reboot and I can get no more information.

She's mildly paranoid about this machine; I'm allowed to use it, but not touch any admin stuff (when she's around). The newest argument is over a stick of RAM I want to install; she doesn't seem convinced that I know my way around hardware enough to do it.

If you can try a reformat and reinstall all of the drivers.

I'm assuming this isn't overclocked in any way. Could you post some temps maybe?

^^^ heh... okay, sing it with me now. Windows key + Break - Advanced-
startup and recovery-

Uncheck automatic restart under system failure about halfway down.

no more reboots. no guarentees on the Bsod's though.

It seems to be OK now; the 2 reboots happened at about 9:15 and 9:45 this morning and nothing since.

No temp data yet; have to get the mobo info from CPU-Z so I can set up MBM properly.

Now I'm guessing it's a memory prob...the crashes happened when loading webpages with Flash/other 'complicated' content. I was getting what sounded like RAM error beeps a few days ago, and that's when (IIRC) the system memory as detected by Windows dropped from 512MB to 448(?).

That doesn't sound so good. Maybe a RAM module went bad on you...do you have any other sticks lying around to test?

Run Memtest that will tell you if the problem is your RAM.
http://www.memtest86.com/

johan851 said:

That doesn't sound so good. Maybe a RAM module went bad on you...do you have any other sticks lying around to test?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I have a new 256 stick that was purchased for this rig a few days ago.

Can memtest be scheduled on system startup? I just realized that this thing has no floppy drive, the external one I bought has vanished as so has my stash of CD-R's.

EDIT: Hooboy, just got: "Why do these things only happen when you come home?" from my mom who believes that no component can ever go bad. She says that she mentioned this to her techie friend and he had no idea what was going on

EDIT: Hooboy, just got: "Why do these things only happen when you come home?" from my mom who believes that no component can ever go bad. She says that she mentioned this to her techie friend and he had no idea what was going on

Click to expand...

Seriously, techie friends are the worst. *sigh*

You can run memtest off of a CD - you should be able to find a bootable memtest image somewhere.

OK, now this is interesting.

In bios, the boot order is set as floppy (nonexistent), CD-ROM and HDD.

It has two drives, A Lite-on DVD-R/CD-RW and Asus CD-ROM. Under the CD-ROM boot order tab, DVD is set as primary and CD-ROM is slave. CD-ROM is not checked by the system during bootup; probably due to it set as slave.

I'm unable to change the CD drive boot order...bios uses + and - to change boot order, but that doesn't seem to work.

So, DVD drive is set as first in the drive boot order, then CD, then HDD. I didn't know one could boot from DVD.

Of course, the documentation (which can only be accessed from within Windows, idiots) has nothing.

You can boot from the DVD too, sure. As long as the drive can read it, it should work fine. The DVD will read a CD too. Just pop a bootable disk in there and you're set.

Hmm...this is interesting. Neither computer (the desktop or my laptop) will see the disc except from within Windows I followed the instructions on memtest's site; d/l, unzip and burn (easy, no?). Unless I missed something, which is entirely possible

You can't burn a bootable CD as far as I know. You will need to copy a disk image with an ISO tool of some kind.

you need to use some sort of image burning tool, ie nero, alcohol or something, you probably just made the mistake i made about 10times with a knoppix iso i wanted.....if you only see a .iso file on the cd you just burned then you've just made yourself either a nice backup or a coaster....

I got it now (sheesh, orionlion82 and I puzzled over this same thing a few months ago, you'd think I would have remembered what we had to do ).

Yay, another reboot/death without BSOD (on reboot, I get "system has recovered from a serious error", again citing a driver as the culprit), same time as the previous two (the difference is the desktop had been off for a week before last night).

Something could be overheating as well; it's insanely hot in this apartment now (came home to a surprise heat wave, haven't got the air conditioners in yet).

And apparently this thing will hibernate and not wake up (power on, monitor still getting signal, but a hard reboot is needed to get it started again). I have yet to run hijackthis and memtest; getting 'permission' to do that might require a bit of explaining (my mom claims that all these problerms are caused solely by my folding install).

If it is forcing a cold reboot, then I am placing my money on the motherboard, this could cause all of your problems, including any POST beeps you might/have gotten about bad memory. It is also possible that the hard drive is dying though, after a short amount of time of usage (hdd activity) it could encounter a bad sector or it could just be nearing its end from age. However, I still would place my two cents towards the motherboard, the only way I can see to test this however (I am guessing you have limited supplies) is to replace all of the major components that could be causing this and/or remove all unnecessary components (including vid card if you have onboard) and then see if it will do it then.

Just today I got about a dozen sporadic program crashes; WMP and other things randomly bailing could be the drive. Yeah, very limited supplies; one 256MB stick newly purchased and the only thing I brought with me is my toolkit (tweezers, screwdrivers, screws, alcohol wipes, static strap).

What say all about those PCI diagnostic cards? I was planning on getting one anyway. Mobo is an Asus A7V8X (should this be continued in the Motherboards forum?). I have a full HDD backup fortunately and if need be I can get a cheap board at Microcenter.

This is going to be real fun, convincing my mom that I had nothing at all to do with things going wrong She did say to just watch it for a few days, so maybe if it continues happening without my touching anything except internet that will help my case.

UPDATE: I finally got an error report that means something; it (or one of the problems) is the display driver (oh lovely, integrated graphics); something related is causing the 'reboots' where monitor has a signal and power is on. Found that and am installing it now; I'm going to tackle the Compaq Connections thing later if I can find the driver CD...

AIM dies (sometimes without even an error message). Netscape dies (that could be an old-version prob; I d/l'ed 8.0 but it won't let me import boomkarks from 7.2 so I have to find and copy the bookmark file).