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Hey, I've got another question for you east side geeks.

What could be causing occasional random restarts? when it's not the powersupply.

here. i'll list my system off for you

Asus A7M-266D (I think, the only Asus dual Socket A board)
2x Athlon MP2000+
1 512MB DDR Dimm, (not anything nice like Crucial)
1 40gig 7200RPM WD
1 80gig 7200RPM Deskstar (just waiting for this thing to give me the squeel of death)
GeForce 4 Ti 4400 (asus card)
Enermax 450Watt Dual Fan Powersupply
2 Dlink NICs
Liteon CDRW (40x, but i'm sure it has nothing to do with my burner, lol)
and uhh, 3 case fans to keep it all cool (and loud, i bought the good fans, can't remember which ones, but 30 bucks a piece).

so anyway, It's running XP pro, and 2000 pro on a dual boot. and it randomly restarts running either OS. my question is what's causing this? aside from my ram i have no particularily cheap parts in this thing.

It doesn't do it often, and not in the middle of things. the last time i did it was when i quit a game (hitman 2).

any ideas?

 
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Ya. u need the fans=).. i got 3 fans too.

Did u try format?

Try messing around with the Video Card settings.. I had a problem before where I would be in WIndows and then it just restarts agian. Had to use a boot disk to re-set the video settings.

 
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well, i have formatted. not to fix the problem. but i have formatted and it makes no difference. if that was the problem i could just boot the my other os. which would have the same effect as formatting. i'm pretty sure it's not a software issue.

 
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Power, what's your P/S wattage?

Refer to this for what inadequate or crappy P/S would do.

Other than that, it could be mobo or RAM if you've already reinstalled. Try lowering all your BIOS settings to default.

 
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powersupply is a 450Watt Enermax (Dual Fan).

 
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I've encountered that problem a few times. Each time it's been a defective Power Supply.

 
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Hey Nitehawk, Where do you usually see your restarts happening?


One thing with restarts is, this is Microsoft's band-aid solution to BSODs (blue screens of death), the reason for that is that you DON'T see the BSOD anymore (like you did in win95/98/me) nowadays the computer just restarts. If you Right Click on My Computer, left click on properties, click on the Advanced tab, then click on "Startup and Recovery" and under the System Failure category take the checkmark off "Automatically reboots". This time when your computer reboots you will actually see the error msg. Now this is only valid IF you are receiving system errors, bsods.

If your computer is _just restarting_ then I would point to to somekind of hardware issue, since it happens after you exit a game it could be either 1. Video Card (either its not seated in properly, also an update of your drivers would be a good idea) 2. Check for Bad Sectors on your hard disk (run chkdsk, and/or defrag)

Hope this helps..

PS: Most of the time the restarts that I have seen occur because of faulty video drivers..

 
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so it could be the ram. hmmm that's what i was looking for. so I should sell this stuff and get something better brought in from somewhere. do you get good memory? haha I wouldn't mind a 1 gig Stick of Crucial or something else good.

 
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Your mobo might not support 1GB sticks of RAM. Most mobos these days support 512 on each slot.

Anyway, I'll see if I can get crucial RAM, but it'll be hella pricey!

As I said, try lowering your BIOS settings first to see if restarts go away. It could be RAM that's been misrated.

 
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I don't think it's the BIOS because it's plugs and detects. usually won't work. cuz i did that once before with my old rams.

I"ll give my cousin a call and ask him if u still can't fix it..

 
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it'll take 1gig dimms of Registered (ECC?) DDR....

EDIT: come to think of it. 1gig dimms of registered DDR are gonna be damn expensive. but shoot me a price for that anyway. haha. and well your at it. Get me a price for 512 of Registered (if it's registered, the brand shouldn't matter so much, right?). and get me prices for what you consider a decent make at least. oh yea. can't forget the 512 meg non regisitered Cruical. ahah. i want to explore all my options here.