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Machine keeps rebooting! need help!

dabuddha

dabuddha

Lifer
Lowdown:

My main machine keeps rebooting. It has had problems with random reboots starting about a month ago. What it's doing is it'll reboot randomly. Sometimes it'll be during the memory test, sometimes it'll be in windows. When it reboots, it always comes back up but the video is completely garbled. It'll have like a plaid pattern on the screen. I can hear the cd roms spinning up and the floppy drive as well as see the screen changing when xp starts booting up (still garbled up though)

Could this be a video card problem? About a few months ago, me and my wife were trying to get the computer inside my desk (corner unit with a "digital dock"). We had the rear elevated as well as the front when my wife accidently let go of the front (slipped) and it fell about a foot down. desk

The video card is an ATI radeon 9800 pro with an arctic vga cooler which makes it heavier than normal. Could the dropping have done something to the video card? I'm at a loss here.

TIA!


UPDATE: Bah I just got my replacement memory sticks from mushkin and it keeps rebooting with the same problem. When I put the single original stick, it didn't have any problems. Could it be a motherboard issue or a memory issue?

UPDATE 2: Double bah. I just got my 2nd set of replacement sticks and same problem.
Summary
When I have a single stick of memory in this system, it seems to be stable. As soon as I put in two sticks, either single channel or dual channel, the machine starts rebooting randomly and repeatedly. I'm able to run quite a few passes of memtest with a single stick but never get a chance to run it with both sticks in.
I talked to the guy at mushkin and he said it sounds like it could be the memory controller on my motherboard. If this is the case, what mother board would you guys recommend for me? I have an athlon 3000+ xp cpu and I don't really care about overclocking at all. I do want to take advantage of dual channel however. He told me that the sticks he sent me the 2nd time have winbond chips. Are these good?

Thanks for all the info/help
 
Originally posted by: Lemodular2
you could try to re-seat everything; take it out and put it back snugly and check all cables.
Click to expand...

Ahh forgot to mention that in my original post. I did take everything out already and cleaned it off and made sure everything was seated properly. There was some dust in there but it wasn't bad.
 
not to be a wise ass but do it again. THis happened to me several times in in the past, sometimes it's the vid card, sometimes its the ram (twice). Once a an optical drive was incorrectly jumpered caused my reboot. Possible power supply problem (not sure on that one)?

that's all I got. Try googling "spontaneous reboot"

hth
 
Sounds like your P.S could be faulty. The 9800 Pro takes alot of juice to run properly.

Computer reboots randomly causes are usually

1)Faulty P.S

2) Overheating

3) Faulty power switch one connected to mobo

4) Bad plug on surge protector ( Ran into that before)

I only listed the power related ones because I think that is your problem.

Ausm
 
Originally posted by: Ausm
Sounds like your P.S could be faulty. The 9800 Pro takes alot of juice to run properly.

Computer reboots randomly causes are usually

1)Faulty P.S

2) Overheating

3) Faulty power switch one connected to mobo

4) Bad plug on surge protector ( Ran into that before)

I only listed the power related ones because I think that is your problem.

Ausm
Click to expand...

Could those result in a corrupted display on reboot?

thanks for the information.
 
Originally posted by: dabuddha
Originally posted by: Ausm
Sounds like your P.S could be faulty. The 9800 Pro takes alot of juice to run properly.

Computer reboots randomly causes are usually

1)Faulty P.S

2) Overheating

3) Faulty power switch one connected to mobo

4) Bad plug on surge protector ( Ran into that before)

I only listed the power related ones because I think that is your problem.

Ausm
Click to expand...

Could those result in a corrupted display on reboot?

thanks for the information.
Click to expand...


A power supply that is getting weak could produce these results.


Ausm

 
Update: Just got back from office depot. Still the same problem. So I took out both sticks of memory and put only one in. Seemed to boot up fine. Put the other one in as well and it seemed ok. Before they were running dual channel mode. I'm going to try to run memtest86 and see what happens. I took them out of dual channel mode for now. I'm also gonna order a new power supply probably. I've been eyeing one of the x-connect ones for awhile. I guess I have an excuse now 🙁
 
Originally posted by: dabuddha
Update: Just got back from office depot. Still the same problem. So I took out both sticks of memory and put only one in. Seemed to boot up fine. Put the other one in as well and it seemed ok. Before they were running dual channel mode. I'm going to try to run memtest86 and see what happens. I took them out of dual channel mode for now. I'm also gonna order a new power supply probably. I've been eyeing one of the x-connect ones for awhile. I guess I have an excuse now 🙁
Click to expand...



<----Drooling over X-connect!

Good Luck!

Ausm
 
Update 2:

I ran memtest86 on both sticks (non dual channel) and had about 24000 errors on test #5. I called up Mushkin and they're going to replace them for me. I tried memtest86 on just a single stick and it didn't have any errors so I think I can survive off 512 meg for now ( I have no idea how! )

Hopefully that is all that was wrong.
 
Bah I just got my memory sticks from mushkin and it keeps rebooting with the same problem. When I put the single original stick, it didn't have any problems. Could it be a motherboard issue or a memory issue?
 
Have you tried the new ram in the working slot, that would isolate if its a bad ram module. Have you tried using the known good RAM on different slots, that should isolate the memory slot.

Run memtest on each combination. and yes, winbond is good

 
Originally posted by: Lemodular2
Have you tried the new ram in the working slot, that would isolate if its a bad ram module. Have you tried using the known good RAM on different slots, that should isolate the memory slot.

Run memtest on each combination. and yes, winbond is good
Click to expand...

I tried the good ram on the 2nd slot and it still has rebooting problem.
 
Sounds like the motherboard. My wife's PC has the same problem. Put one stick in. Ran forever. Put two in, and it locked, wierd graphics, reboots.... Swapped both sticks out. Same thing. Put one stick in; works fine. Thought it was the PSU. Replaced Antec with Enermax and then Enermax with X-Connect. Same thing. Video card? Took mine out of my PC and put it in hers. Took all of her parts out of her PC and put it on an MSI I borrowed from work... Works great. Put everything back in her case and told her to live with one 512MB until I felt like swapping the board out. 😛

EDIT: Changed "had" to "has." She still has the motherboard, so even though she doesn't have the same problem, she would if I put the second stick back in. 😛

Her motherboard is going downhill fast, though. It keeps putting Wireless NIC's to "sleep" and then not bringing them back after the PC wakes up. I've tried two different NIC's in all four slots and the same thing. And yes.. XP has been instructed to NOT control power management for that device and the power management in the BIOS has been adjusted manually. It's just plain fuxored. 😛
 
Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
Sounds like the motherboard. My wife's PC has the same problem. Put one stick in. Ran forever. Put two in, and it locked, wierd graphics, reboots.... Swapped both sticks out. Same thing. Put one stick in; works fine. Thought it was the PSU. Replaced Antec with Enermax and then Enermax with X-Connect. Same thing. Video card? Took mine out of my PC and put it in hers. Took all of her parts out of her PC and put it on an MSI I borrowed from work... Works great. Put everything back in her case and told her to live with one 512MB until I felt like swapping the board out. 😛

EDIT: Changed "had" to "has." She still has the motherboard, so even though she doesn't have the same problem, she would if I put the second stick back in. 😛

Her motherboard is going downhill fast, though. It keeps putting Wireless NIC's to "sleep" and then not bringing them back after the PC wakes up. I've tried two different NIC's in all four slots and the same thing. And yes.. XP has been instructed to NOT control power management for that device and the power management in the BIOS has been adjusted manually. It's just plain fuxored. 😛
Click to expand...

Wow sounds just like what's happening with my machine. Just curious, but when it would reboot, would the display be corrupt or would it be fine?
 
Yep. That why I replaced the video card. I was certain that was the problem, especially since I had replaced the GPU cooler with Zalman heat sinks. I thought maybe the GPU had overheated, but the replacement I put in there to troubleshoot this was the very one out of my machine.
 
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