Random rebooting in Windows 7 but not other OSs

[Barberetti]

Hey all,

Ok, does anyone know what might be the cause of a PC randomly rebooting while running Windows 7, but working perfectly fine running another OS on the same partition? So far I've tried Windows XP Pro 32 and 64, Linux Debian Wheezy 64 and Mint 64 and have had no problems with any of them. The problem only occurs in Windows 7.

At the bottom of this post is a copy/paste of the initial email I sent to the tech dept of the place I got the motherboard from. It has the details of everything I'd tried before contacting them, including the hardware specs. After a bit of back and forth trying some suggestions, they've asked if I can send the PC to them to have a look at, but they'll charge me, so I'd sooner not. Some of what's below is copy/paste replies from other suggestions, which is why this post may seem a bit disjointed.

The stuff about the mice in the email is probably redundant as It's rebooted at least once without mouse movement since then. Also, no dump files are being created, even though the options in the System Failure section in Startup & Recovery are set to do so. The Windows Error Reporting Service is switched on. The Windows 7 installation disk is not new. It's one I've had for years, and is the one used before the upgrade.

The only hardware I've not been able to swap out with hardware that I know to be ok is the PSU, as I don't have a spare that's powerful enough. However, that was fine before the upgrade, and is fine with the other operating systems I've tried, so I'm pretty sure it's ok.

I haven't used the USB3 ports at all, as I figured this might be the cause at one point. All of my USB devices are using the USB2 ports. The USB3 controller is disabled in the BIOS. This didn't solve the problem.

I've tried removing all of the USB devices and using just a PS\2 keyboard and mouse. This did not solve the problem.

I've completely stripped down the PC and cleaned everything.

Disabling Aero didn't help, so I decided to install a fresh Windows 7 with the idea of installing 1 driver a week until it started rebooting again. It didn't even last 2 days

So, any help would be great!


---email starts here---
I upgraded my PC about a year ago, and since then I have been having a problem with it, namely rebooting when I move the mouse. Hardware details are at the bottom.

Before the upgrade, this PC was rock solid. No problems at all for the 3 years since I put it together. Last year I replaced the motherboard, CPU and ram. I also replaced one of the two old hard drives with a SSD. I partitioned and formatted the SSD and installed Windows 7 on it. Installed the motherboard drivers, then the graphics card drivers. This is when the problem started. After the required reboot, I moved the mouse and the PC rebooted again on it's own. At this point, the PC hasn't been connected to the Internet, and the SSD is the only hard drive plugged in, so I can't see it being a virus or malware.

Since then, over the course of the year (when I've had the time to troubleshoot this), I have replaced the SSD, the ram, the mouse (with another USB one and a PS/2 one), reinstalled Win 7 again twice (including on the old hard drive),all to no avail. This random rebooting problem always occurs when I move the mouse. Upon rebooting, sometimes moving the mouse will cause it to reboot again straight away. This can sometimes happen several more times before the system will ... stabalise? The system can be fine for periods of a few days. Sometimes it will be fine for a week. Once it lasted for two weeks without the problem occuring.

This happens regardless of what I'm doing, whether it be playing games or just browsing a website. But always when I move the mouse.

I've disabled the automatic restart on system failure option which made no difference. Checking the logs in Event Viewer after the reboot shows errors stating "The previous system shut down at [time] on [date] was unexpected".

Having an old XP Pro partition still set up on the second drive, and being into a bit of retro gaming lately, I decided to use that for a while and see if the problem continues there. I'm over a month in, and no problems whatsoever. Absolutely rock solid with everything I could throw at it. So I'm ruling out a hardware fault, which I'm guessing leaves some sort of conflict/settings problem with Win 7.

The drivers have all been up to date on the dates when I have worked on solving this problem.

Anyway, here are the specs for the newer hardware:

Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-DS3P
CPU: AMD FX-8350 8 core 4GHz
RAM: 1 x 8GB PC3-12800 DDR3 800MHz
SSD Sandisk U110 64GB

... and the rest if needed:

Graphics card: Novatech GTX 650 1024MB
PSU: Icute M 700W
Mouse 1: Kana SteelSeries (USB)
Mouse 2: PC Line PCL-FL1 (USB)
Mouse 3: A4Tech Wheel 3D SWW-35 (PS/2)

---end email---

 

[Ketchup]

Sounds like a problem with the drive, or the SATA cable. Since SSDs can fully use the bandwidth of an SSD cable, it will point out any small imperfections that a HDD may not bring to light. So, try the cable first. If not the cable, it's probably the drive. And don't forget to rule out the SATA port as well.

Mouse drivers are standard Windows issue, so I really don't see this being a software problem, since it is seen from new installs, and only on this drive.

 

[Elixer]

I've disabled the automatic restart on system failure option which made no difference. Checking the logs in Event Viewer after the reboot shows errors stating "The previous system shut down at [time] on [date] was unexpected".

Hmm, so, you sure it is disabled?
Usually, once that is disabled, you would see the actual BSOD.
Since this isn't the case, and you are still seeing reboots that smells of something is corrupted, but, as you said, you already did the reinstall option.
Check crystaldiskinfo, and see what the stats of the SSD are, and if anything listed looks wrong.
If XP & linux are working though, that kinda points to a corrupted win 7, what is the source of your win 7? I suppose it is possible that, that image is corrupted somehow?

 

[Barberetti]

Sounds like a problem with the drive, or the SATA cable. Since SSDs can fully use the bandwidth of an SSD cable, it will point out any small imperfections that a HDD may not bring to light. So, try the cable first. If not the cable, it's probably the drive. And don't forget to rule out the SATA port as well.

Mouse drivers are standard Windows issue, so I really don't see this being a software problem, since it is seen from new installs, and only on this drive.

Nope. As I said, this is happening if I install Win 7 on the old drive as well, which is non SSD by the way, and different cable and port. Also, as I said, the other OSs I install on it work fine.

Hmm, so, you sure it is disabled?
Usually, once that is disabled, you would see the actual BSOD.
Since this isn't the case, and you are still seeing reboots that smells of something is corrupted, but, as you said, you already did the reinstall option.
Check crystaldiskinfo, and see what the stats of the SSD are, and if anything listed looks wrong.
If XP & linux are working though, that kinda points to a corrupted win 7, what is the source of your win 7? I suppose it is possible that, that image is corrupted somehow?

Yep, it's definitely disabled. As I said, this problem is happening when I install Win 7 on the old drive as well, so this isn't a problem with the SSD.

The image was direct from Microsoft's site a few years back, as my original DVD .. err .. had an accident. I sat on it one night when I was drunk . A while back someone suggested the possibility that the image/DVD might be corrupt, but I figured it would crash out during an install when it hit that part if that was the case. Since you've mentioned it, I'll grab another copy and try it out. Thanks!