AMD System reboots every 4 minutes or so

[smurph98gt]

Alright, I built my aunt a system back in November.. AMD XP 2100+, some shuttle mobo, 512 PC2700 ram, CD-RW/DVD, and a GeForce 2 MX400 (she doesn't play games or anything). I also tossed on Windows XP Professional for her.

She told me that it would run for about 4 minutes, and then just completely shut down and reboot. I had her go into the BIOS and check the heat, its running right at 45* Celsius.. a little warm, but nothing terrible, especially considering they live in Arizona.

I first had her try and run a virus scan, but it didn't get half way done before it shut off. So I had her try booting into Safe Mode to see if it would work there, same thing, shuts off after a little while. Next I had her go into the BIOS and wait for a few minutes to see if it was the computer shutting itself off, and not a windows thing, but it stayed running just fine.

I'm about 400 miles away from the computer, so I can't just grab it and help her out, I need to walk her through everything over the phone. Any ideas guys?

Thanks!

-Ronald

 

[Megatomic]

I just fixed a friend's system (Abit KV7/Barton 2500+/512MB Samsung PC2700) that was doing the same thing. My fix was to bump up Vdimm by .1V and to update his BIOS to the latest version. He's now happily converting his family's home movies to mpeg-4 and burning them to DVDs with the same system.

 

[NFS4]

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/sasser.asp

 

[paladiin]

Did this just recently start? If so, it might be the Sasser virus that's going around right now. Check out this site on info regarding symptoms of this virus, and ask her if that's what's happening. One symptom of the virus is a crash/reboot cycle. If that's the problem, follow the instructions there for removal.

 

[Macro2]

Besides Sasser it could also be Blaster or a number of other viruses.

You can get a cleaner for sasser and blaster at symantec.com for free.

 

[Megatomic]

Wow, I'm now so immersed in hardware that I didn't consider the worms... God, I love my router.

 

[Macro2]

They say an unprotected computer hooked to the internet will get sasser within 10 minutes....
humm

 

[smurph98gt]

Damn, I tried having her virus scan for them, but like I said, it crapped out. I'll send her those links then and hope we can get rid of it.

I put a router in there for her, but that doesn't mean one of them didn't just download and install it thinking it was a funny picture or something. :roll: Thanks for the heads up and those links guys!

 

[jbrock31]

It sounds like the problem just started. Here is a link to a great fix.

http://forums.delphiforums.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=maxcommport&msg=185335.1

 

[Macro2]

Maybe she will have time to run this becore shutdown


Sasser removal tool

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
Wow, I'm now so immersed in hardware that I didn't consider the worms... God, I love my router.

Same here.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: smurph98gt
Damn, I tried having her virus scan for them, but like I said, it crapped out. I'll send her those links then and hope we can get rid of it.

I put a router in there for her, but that doesn't mean one of them didn't just download and install it thinking it was a funny picture or something. :roll: Thanks for the heads up and those links guys!

Also, how up-to-date are the antivirus signatures? If they're more than a day or two old, they're going to need to be updated. I remember one day when about seven new flavors of Bagle came out

You might want to get ZoneAlarm on that system too. It'll ask questions about new stuff trying to get out from inside, not just keep the bad guys out from the outside, and it keeps log files that you can peruse to find out what it's been told to permit.

For my mom's system, I set her up as a Restricted User. She can't accidentally or purposely install spyware or any other kind of software. A virus that got loose under her account would be on a shorter leash.

 

[smurph98gt]

Well guys, its been a little while, but my Aunt got some time to work with me over the phone, and unfortunately the problem still happens. She downloaded the FxBlaster tool, it could never completely run, because the computer would shut off. Then she used the online tool at Microsofts page, it said she was clean. She did the windows update, and went on her merry way, rebooting every 4 or so minutes.

She can't get a full virus check in either for the same reason.

Heres where it gets retarded. If she uses my uncles profile to log in, the problem never happens.

I'm lost here guys, anything new that I can try here?

Thanks!

-Ronald

 

[Suki]

it's a long shot but ...
delete ur aunt profile, reboot and re-create the profile again.

 

[dkozloski]

Compare screenshots of running Applications and Processes between the two profiles to see what is different. Ctrl+Alt+Del gets you there.