11 replies to this topic

[GlenR]

Need more help from you guys.

My father-in-law's VMC has started rebooting itself. No apaparent reason, you are just watching TV and the screen goes blank and the PC resets itself. No strange issues before the reset and nothing in the Event Log aside from the previous shutdown was unexpected message.

Temps for CPU & MB look OK - 67 and 52 respectively, and all the fans are running OK.

I'm guessing a PSU issue - bad capacitor ar similar - but would like to get a second opinion from the forum before I commit him to a new PSU.

[Tak]

Bizarre, I'm in exacly the same position, except this is W7. Have ended up swapping the system out with a spare I had to diagnose the problem as it pays to keep your in-laws happy.

Everything I've read says "it's really hard to know what is causing a random reboot" but my guess is that power supply would be the best place to start if you've ruled out overheating (e.g. they've blocked the vents with a new picture of their favourite son in law just as summers approaching)

After that popular options seemed to be RAM and most suggestions seemed to be hardware related rather than software although not to rule it out.

To be honest, having unplugged it on the weekend I wouldn't be suprised is the cheapass 4-way power board he had it plugged into is my problem!

Let me know how you go as I'm not sure when I'll get to testing out this one.

[logifuse]

Use CPU-Z to check what voltage the RAM is actually running at. I've got 4 sticks of XMS2 in my main HTPC & if you go slightly above 1.8V, it's the symptoms you describe. They're pretty warm at 1.8v, at 1.94 (or 1.96?) they were red hot & would cause a crash. The onboard graphics using them probably contributed.

Justin

[GlenR]

Use CPU-Z to check what voltage the RAM is actually running at. I've got 4 sticks of XMS2 in my main HTPC & if you go slightly above 1.8V, it's the symptoms you describe. They're pretty warm at 1.8v, at 1.94 (or 1.96?) they were red hot & would cause a crash. The onboard graphics using them probably contributed.

Justin

No on-board graphics on this unit. It's been running a few years now without doing thsi so something's broken. I'll tryu and check the voltages. I did find one of the RAM sticks slightly unseated, but I reseated it and the issue continues.

[GlenR]

Swapped out the PSU for an old one from a spare PC I have. Same issue, sudden reboots (although sometimes it doesn't restart straight away).

I guess the next step is RAM, or else it's the MB. Not much else I can think of it could be.

[TiggerK]

Hi Glen,

Normally I find it's power supply or mainboard. RAM would generally (although not always) cause BSOD's so a blue flash might appear before the restart, sounds like it's not though. Control Panel-System-Advanced System Settings- (Startup&Recovery) Settings, check that Automatically restart is not ticked, that would stop it at a BSOD if one is happening, and if so, RAM would be suspect.

But I'd have to say MB, which is a pain these days for older systems as nothing older than 1 year is easy to get ! Might be MB, CPU, RAM time, worst case scenario.

But check all the fans are working too BTW. Edit: See you've done that. That CPU temp is quite high at 62?? Not critical, but fairly high.

Cheers
TiggerK

[GlenR]

I'm trying to eliminate everything before announcing MB. As you say, if it's MB, then it means CPU/RAM as well. Not to mention a complete software rebuild as every driver will change.

I tried the ex-PSU on a system at home and it just wouldn't start. I'm beginning to suspect the PSU failed and took something with it (maybe the MB). Not feeling confident of a cheap fix right now...

[TiggerK]

Of course video card is another possibility.... but still suspect MB, esp if it's a Gigabyte.

[GlenR]

Well, despite trying a different PSU & RAM, the thing still reboots itself. Looks like a new MB is in order. Geez, it's hard to find one with enough PCI slots these days. They have 3 tuner cards installed (Nova-T 500 dual and 2 x Avermedia 777s) all of which are PCI, so I need a board with 3 PCI slots. Don't seem to be many of them around these days.

The hunt continues...

[TiggerK]

As per my PM Glen, Intel DH67CL-B3 is a great ATX board with 3 x PCI. G840CPU and 2 x 2GB DDR3-1333 KIngston/Corsair etc. All set.

And BTW, everyone, try and avoid buying any hard drives ATM (not that you need to), Bangkok floods means prices are very high as most of the world's HDD"s come from there, or parts for them.

Cheers
TiggerK

[TiggerK]

I should also mention that bad sectors on a hard drive can also cause that, actually a BSOD really, but default behaviour on a BSOD is automatic restart, so as per my previous suggestion, if it's not BSOD'ing, back to MB.

[GlenR]

I'm pretty sure ther's no BSOD. I've seen it happen and there is no flicker or anything like that, the screen just goes blank the reboots as if someone switched it off then on. Even if there is a reboot automatically after a BSOD, you usually see a flickm of the error screen before the reboot.