Mysterious Mid-Day Reboot

[NewSilkTurtle]

Hi all,

This afternoon my PC rebooted itself without being asked. This is the first and only time it has occurred. I ran a virus scan and a trojan scan and it was all clean. I wonder why this happened. Anyone that can shed some light on the situation would be appreciated. I am running Win2k, SP4 with all available updates.

Thanks!

 

[PCHPlayer]

You may be the victim of a random BSOD. Do you have auto-restart enabled? If so, when a BSOD occurs it looks like a random reboot. If it starts to happen with any frequency turn off auto-restart so you can read the error.

 

[NewSilkTurtle]

There was no BSOD when this happened. I was simply working normally, and so was the computer. I don't even know what "auto-restart" is. There is a UPS so even power failures don't affect this machine.

 

[PCHPlayer]

Auto-restart can be disabled by going to My Computer->Advanced->Startup and Recovery. There is a checkbox there that says to automatically reboot on error. If this is checked you will never see the BSOD, it will just restart. Uncheck this option so that you do get the BSOD next time it happens.

 

[NewSilkTurtle]

The box you mentioned was indeed checked, and I unchecked it.

However!

It says nothing about errors there. It says "System Failure." Same thing? But what IS a "system failure"? There have been many, many incidents that I would call "system failure" but the computer has never rebooted itself like it did yesterday. Absolutely nothing happened yesterday that would indicate "failure" or that any kind of error had occurred, except for the reboot itself.

So I'm still mystified....

 

[PCHPlayer]

Now it's a waiting game to see if it happens again. If it does not, just write it off as an isolated glitch.

 

[Gravity]

Originally posted by: NewSilkTurtle
There was no BSOD when this happened. I was simply working normally, and so was the computer. I don't even know what "auto-restart" is. There is a UPS so even power failures don't affect this machine.

Are you sure the janitor wasn't nearby? Sometimes those sneaky bastids will hit your restart button for a joke. Some are very stealthy and consider getting away undetected as a badge of honor. They have annual association meetings where Janitors are awarded plaques, trinkets and in some of the larger associations, cruises for the most confirmed stealth reboots.

You may want to review your security camera recordings to eliminate this concern.

Best,

Gravity

 

[NewSilkTurtle]

Thanks for the idea, but there is no janitor here to blame (unless perhaps I have a ghost in the house and don't know it).