Help!! System rebooting and ......

[Foamfoot]

yesterday, completely out of the blue, my computer has decided to give me an ulcer. its a self built:

P4 2.53 w/Alpha HS
Asus P4PE MB
512 Corsair XMS 3000 RAM
WD 80 GIG HD
WD 40 GIG HD
Hercules Radeon 9700
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card
Antec True Power 480 W PS

Running Win XP
and for whats its with a USB Hub and wireless Logitech Mouse and Keyboard


All of a sudden on Easter Sunday the computer start to reboot. no error, no bluescreen, just reboot. sometimes it would reboot during the reboot. somtimes it actually lets me log on and then will reboot within a few minutes while messing around on the net. it seems like it would only reboot when i would click on things - whether it was a new page in the forums for help or a different option in ASUS probe.

i checked my temps in the bios, they seem fine. also checked them in ASUS probe before i crashed and seemed fine. i swapped out my PS and threw in a crappy EVER 300 W i had sitting around, immediately had the same rebooting prob before i couldn't even load windows.

i just tried hooking up my PC to a different PC area in the house that had a different surge protector and peripherals. no luck, same rebooting prob.

the only bit of info i received so far was an error message within windows that said the processor has detected a fatal error do you want to send report. while i was sending the report but before i could check it out myself my comp would reboot seconds later.

for some final info, i was overclocking slightly, very little and the comp is only a few months old. of course i reset everything in the bios after the first few crashes/reboots and am running at stock speed, same probs.

any help advice would be so appreciated, im going nuts. could it be the hard drive? any way to check if its the CPU? my other PC is an AMD so i cant even swap that chip in. does anyone think reinstalling WIN XP would help?

thanks so much for any advice/help...

 

[tjaisv]

Spontaneous reboots are usually the result of incompatible/buggy device drivers and sometimes third-party firewall software. Are you experiencing any other problems at all with your system?

 

[Foamfoot]

no. funny thing is, i havent installed anything on the PC just before these probs started. i game on this sytem every night for a few hours and havent had one crash since i built it, its been rock solid. i didnt put anything new into it, hardware or software. i went out for Easter dinner with the PC on - after playing Shadowbane most of hte morning, came home and immediately had problems. as soon as i tried to access the net, it rebooted. i have had problems since. every once in a while i can spend a few minutes on the web, never more then 15 mins or so though.

thanks for trying to help, much appreciated.

 

[tjaisv]

Have you recently scanned your system for viruses?

Also I'd suggest maybe running a system performance/stability analyzer like WinTasks 4 Pro to see if you have any memory leaks or whatnot.

 

[Foamfoot]

yeah, i use AVG and it scans for viruses every night. i can try the test the prob is i cant stay on long enough to download or run anything anymore. drives me crazy how i can go from stable as a rock to this in one afternoon without installing any new hardware or software.

i do appreciate the help though!!

 

[Green Man]

Chances are, your computer is set to reboot itself whenever it encounters a Stop Error. To disable the automatic rebooting, read the FAQ Why does my computer reboot itself?

To help diagnosing the problem, please view the stop error information in the applications section of the event viewer. One way to access the event viewer is to right click on my computer and select manage. Armed with the Error Message, Error Description, and Event ID, someone here may be able to point you in the right direction to getting this problem tracked down.

Heh, good luck getting it stable long enough to pull the stop error info

 

[Foamfoot]

ok, i was able to look at some error messages, here it goes:

"Error Code 00000009C, parameter 1 00000000, parameter 2 8053f0f0, parameter 3 ccooooff, parameter 4 20040189."

i also had a few

"The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on volume C."

and when i was able to look-up on of the errors that popped up i got:

"A hardware failure reported by your CPU. This behavior occurs because your computer processor detected an unrecoverable hardware error and reported it to windows."


does this help at all? should i try formatting my HDD and reinstalling xp? think it could be a short in my MB?

thanks so much for any help

 

[AbsolutDealage]

Seems like windows is pretty hosed to me. If you don't have all that much loaded it probably will not be that much of a hassle to reload windows. Remove all cards/devices except Mobo/memory/proc/video card/hard drive. Boot from there and then format and reload windows. If you still have a problem then you at least know it's a hardware issue, not a windows issue.

 

[Foamfoot]

thanks, ill try that next. i ran a chkdsk on C and it went through the entire process, system rebooted. i logged onto the internet but by about the second or third websight i tried to access it went right to the reboot screen again. for what's its worth, the reboots seem to happen as i click things, usually a new web page. i click, screen goes black and im back at rebooting.

when i get home tonight i guess ill try a fresh install.

any other tips before reinstalling?

thanks again for all of your help!!

 

[Green Man]

The top causes for machine check errors are pushing the O/C too far, bad RAM, faulty P/S, bad CPU, or a bad MB. Its also possible that the file system problems were caused by whatever caused the machine check stop error. I'd agree that you should start by reinstalling windows, this install is hosed. Check to make sure all your fans are working, it could be an overheat problem. If you have a PC health tab in BIOS, check you're voltages...although that doesn't tell you what they are doing under load, you'll at leasat see if they are good with minimal load. Reseating the RAM might help, or you could run memtest86.