If I resize a video, my computer restarts?

I've been building computers for 16 years, and I've NEVER had a problem like this... its just about the strangest one I've seen.

Just built a new rig to replace my old video rig. Its an AMD 4200+ X2, Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2, 2 gigs of PC5300 ram, Nvidia 8500GT, 1 250gig hard drive, and 1 DVD burner, all powered by a a nice seasonic 500w PSU thats proven to work fine.

I just installed windows XP on it, put in the latest drivers for everything, etc, everything went without a hitch.

So tonight I start watching some DIVX encoded movies with VLC, and when I start resizing the window to make it bigger, it reboots the computer (I assume with a BSOD but its too quick to see). I've never seen that before! IT just up and restarts! Its done it about 10 times tonight, with VLC and with MPLayer.. and I don't know what else to do.

Anyone have any ideas? Im stumped.

EDIT: forgot to mention that WoW works fine on this rig... plays it to it's heart's content. Also, Im on Windows XP SP2

My first thought of possible culprits would be the PSU. I would assume as you resize the video the CPU (and possibly video card) goes berserk, and if it there isn't sufficient amount of juice, it will just shut down. Used to happen to me a lot when I had my initial O/C. The 650W PSU should have been more than enough for what I have, and maybe it is simply crap but as soon as I moved all 4 HHD's to a separate PSU it never did it again.

Check out the event manager and see if it recorded anything for the reboot.

AtomicMonkey said:

My first thought of possible culprits would be the PSU. I would assume as you resize the video the CPU (and possibly video card) goes berserk, and if it there isn't sufficient amount of juice, it will just shut down. Used to happen to me a lot when I had my initial O/C. The 650W PSU should have been more than enough for what I have, and maybe it is simply crap but as soon as I moved all 4 HHD's to a separate PSU it never did it again.

Click to expand...

The thing is that:
a) this PSU is fairly new
b) this PSU was once in a beefier system with a 2900xt in it and it worked great!
c) If wow works great, which puts the computers usage much higher, then why is it just with videos?

I personalyl think its software.. i just don't know where to start.

MRD said:

Check out the event manager and see if it recorded anything for the reboot.

Click to expand...

I did. nothing. You know how windows logging is

Does it do it with all video players? Try a different one, and see if you have the same problem.

well he said it did it with mediaplayer and vlc, so maybe not all video palyers, but at least those 2.

Is it with any video file? maybe there's something up with that file.

dodgy codec? tried re-installing them?

maybe something is inflicting with the graphics driver? perhaps a codec?
do these videos work in WMP? or DivX player?

Also, if you ticked the option "Do Not Automatically Restart After Error" to see if it gives any clue?


ive had issues once with drivers/codec mixes that didnt go over so smoothly.