Random rebooting?. can anyone help me debug this problem?

[Cainxinth]

A week ago my network was hacked and my computer infected with a dozen virii. I cleaned it with Panda, but it just never ran the same so I moved everything onto my supplementary hard drives, reformatted c: and installed win2k fresh.

Since then my system has started randomly rebooting itself for no apparent reason. It happens when I?m surfing, reading email, watching pr0? I mean doing homework in word, etc. Sometimes it will be fine for hours, other times it will happen three times in succession.

It?s not a heat issue, I check constantly and my 1.4ghz T-bird C is a steady 51C. The voltages are steady also, but I?m concerned it could be a power problem. I have a 410W Antec PSU, but a whole lot hooked up to it: four 7200rpm hard drives (2 are on a PCI IDE adapter), cd-rw, dvd-rom, floppy, ieee1394 card, three case fans, and of course the hsf. Am I overloaded? For the record I was running all four drives for three weeks without any problems.

All connections are good and the comp is virus free. One last note, my mobo (MSI K7 Master) is a buggy piece of crap that hasn?t worked right since the day I bought it, but I thought all the workarounds I?ve done had it in check. Also, internet explorer has to close all the time, and once in a while I?ll go to look for my files on the other drives and they won?t be there, when I reboot or log off they return.

Thoughts from the experts?

 

[Willoughbyva]

Do a google search for memtest86 and use it to see if your ram is ok. Make sure you have all the latest drivers and service patches.

 

[Cainxinth]

thanks for the help.

I got 8 errors on test 5. The memtest86 page said that errors on test 5 are common with Athlons and cheap ram. I have an athlon but my ram is crucial pc2100. Do you think I should determine the possibly bad module and replace it? I don't really have much cash to burn, but I can't have my comp rebooting every five minutes. :disgust:

 

[DJFuji]

try turning off automatic reboot in the "advanced" menu of system properties. That way you'll get a BSOD instead of a reboot. You may find some useful info there in isolating the problem.

 

[arty62]

If you have an ethernet card installed, check it out & drivers too.....rt

 

[Night201]

It could be signs that your PS is starting to go. That is a lot of stuff hooked up to your PS. If you can't resolve it, you may want to look into getting a more powerful one.

 

[Cainxinth]

If anyone cracks this case, I owe ya a round should we ever meet.

I've gotten blue screen error message for: kmode_exception, irql, page_fault, and a few others. The system crashes anytime I try to move files from one hard drive to another, or if I use internet explorer for a while. It crashed with each ram module separately. I ran ramtest86 test 5 on the modules individually and no errors were found, last time when I ran it with both installed it found 13.

I'm beginning to rule out RAM, and assume it?s a software problem. I want to format and reinstall but first I have to resolve a recurring mobo bug. If anyone wants to take a crack at that here's the problem:

My motherboard (MSI K7 Master) has a bug that MSI denies and that I can't find info on anymore with google. The bug makes the computer halt at boot. The workaround I found online, which was to adjust the 3.3v pot on my psu to 3.29v got the computer booting fine. But, since then anytime I make a change in hardware the system will halt when I attempt to enter the BIOS. No official workaround for that problem, so my solution has been to disconnect everything, pull all cards, reset the cmos, flash the bios, and breathe deeply. Sometimes it works, when it doesn't I wait a few days and try again, so far its always come back.

<rant ahead... skip to avoid whining>
I bought the board because this is my first system, and I wanted a stable platform, so I thought "hey, what's more stable than a server mobo?" Little did I know about unpublicized bugs, hybrid chipsets, and athlon c 1.4's that can fry eggs. Also thank you very much to the person who told me to just scratch the thermal pad off my heat sink and not worry about damaging it. The lesson learned there: always get a second opinion. </rant>

Well, I'm up to my ass in problems. Any help you guys can offer is greatly, greatly appreciated.

 

[earthman]

Why would scratching off the heat sink pad be a problem? If you use a sharp flat tool it shouldn't damage anything, and thermal grease will work better.

 

[Cainxinth]

I didn't take care to take it off cleanly, and like an idiot, I thought scratches wouldn't reduce its effectiveness. I have a taisol cgk760 with a delta 5400rpm fan, and ASII, my ambient case temp is ~20C, and my non-overclocked cpu temp is 40-60C...and I live in a poorly heated college apartment in Syracuse, NY. When I get a chance I wan't to replace it and resell on ebay as damaged but functional.

Anyway, If anyone has any ideas here's where I am now. One of my two ram modules was showing errors consistently in memtest86, so I removed it. The system is more stable, but it still crashes when I try to move files between hard drives. The things different about my computer since the recent reformat were dx9 and ie6. If I manage to get into my bios and boot to the win2000 disk and fdisk, i won't be reinstalling them. I want to replace the goddamn mobo alltogether but I just don't have the money.