Figure out why pc keeps rebooting (not sasser)
 

I want to figure out why my pc keeps randomly rebooting. It does it during different tasks, such as internet explorer, warcraft 3, etc.

I know it's not sasser, cuz the reboots are different and I ran a bunch of checks for that. Is there a diagnostic tool that could see if my system files have become unstable? I'd rather not sys restore unless I need to.

Thanks

Bad power supply or on-board voltage regulation.

Check the voltages in the BIOS, and see if they are out of tolerance.

Been there, done that.

-SF

Don't do a sys-restore until you have ruled out ALL hardware problems; you'll just have a PC with the OEM installed software that reboots at will.

My PC used to do that during games. A friend suggested the following, and it worked:

Right click on My Computer, go to properties. Click on the Advanced tab. Under "Startup and Recovery," click on Settings. Under "System Failure," make sure "Automatically Restart" is unchecked. Mine was checked, and sure enough, when I unchecked it, my computer never restarted again (unless I did it myself). This might or might not work. Good luck!

-Lasereth

your cpu fan still working?

a friend had a reboot problem long ago... turned out to be a dead cpu fan.

I'll try the auto restart fix. It's an off-the-shelf pc, so the voltage shouldn't be off (unless HP fucked up). And I can hear the CPU fan kick on every once in a while :)

THanks

Umm, a home-built computer has more of a problem with maintaining voltages than a off-the-shelf hp?

Try again..

Stop..

Flip that statement.

You will be dealing with less expensive/lower quality power supply parts by purchasing a manufactured PC. So now, make SURE that you check your voltages. Some of the HP's have very small power supplies that are certain to go out.

-SF

You can uncheck restart on system failure, but even if it works it's more than likely just eliminating the symptoms without treating the real problem.

The very first thing I would do is check the power supply fan. Personal experience on 2 occasions that I can think of.

Then as saltfish says, check the voltages.

Okay, how do you check the voltages? (I guess I assumed that HP wouldn't have screwed me over, but, hey. :))

Update: I think it's being caused by a corrupt driver. I got a very nice blue screen telling me to run driver verifier. When I did, it said that this driver was bad: savrt.sys

Um... I'm lost. What do I do?

EDIT: I googled it, and found out that savrt belongs to Norton. So, I'll try reinstalling it in safe mode.

EDIT2: Ahh, system instability. It starts up wicked slow, then either reboots or blue screens. I got a different sys file this time (didn't write it down). I'm going witth a sys recovery (can't even get into windows for a sys restore).

Oh, for god's sakes.

For the last time, Windows XP doesn't give a blue screen of death. It just restarts 'to avoid hardware damage'. You have to change a registry key to get it to display the screen with the memory address.

Well, it's not the same BSOD as from the 9.x days, but it's blue, and there's no escape. Close enough in my book. I didn't change a reg key, so I really have no idea what happened.

Well, the lesson I learned from this is, back everything up, often.

Windows XP does have a BSOD. It flashes up blue with white lettering and says "Beginning dump of physical memory." It scared me the first time it does it...now I just think it's the coolest sounding error I've ever seen.

-Lasereth

Yes, yes! That's what happened! When I saw that, I had the funniest notion that my HD was cooked. Thank god it wasn't.

The hamster is getting old. You need a new one.

Unchecking the auto restart is ALWAYS a good idea as at least then you will be presented with error code you can use to find a sollution. But if its comming up with different system files with no consitency then i would try swaping out the ram. if you get a bad module when the system goes to access a commonly used system file thats been writen into ram and the ram module is bad you will get varying system file errors.