Random Restarts? I have Lost IT!!!!!

[Sammy5000]

Hey All...

I am looking for any guidance whatsoever, as my normal means to troubleshoot this issue has led me nowhere. Just the last 24 hours, one of my rigs would just restart randomly. There have been a couple of occurances. The first one started when my wife was printing something from the web, and then it rebooted when some processing intensive apps were running (Ad-aware/ Norton Antivirus).

Now, I have been around the block enough times to know that random restarts occur for the following reasons:

1 - Heat issues
2 - Bad / Failing RAM
3 - Bad / Failing Power Supply
4 - Spyware/Virus
5 - Any new apps/drivers that can conflict

Here are my Computer Specs:

P4 2.4b (533 Mhz)
Windows XP Home Edition
Gigabyte GA-8sQ800 mobo (Bios F8a)
1 Gig of Crucial DDR (Pc2700 - 4x256) running in Dual Channel
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9700Pro
Onboard Sound
80GB HDD (MAxtor/2mb cache/ATA133)
20GB HDD (Maxtor/2mb cache/ATA66)
Lite-On CD-RW (52x24x52)
Antec SmartPower 400Watt

Background - Now, when the wife called me on the first random restart, I initially thought it was due to overheating because of an overclock I did (over a week ago). I bumped up my FSB to 166(2.98 Ghz). At that time of the overclock, I monitored my temps, and ran Prime95's torture test for 24 hours with no warnings or error messages. And my temps are fine - CPU 36 idle/ 42 load, Mobo - 39 idle / 45 load. No issues whatsoever for over one week, then just yesterday, a Random Restart occurs. I got home, checked my temps, all normal. I decide to get my CPU back to normal settings (133x18) to get back to 2.4. The computer stays on throughout the night.

This morning, I run Ad-Aware to see if there is spyware that could be causing any problems, and during the middle of the scan, the system reboots. I run Ad-Aware again, it finds three objects, I delete them and move on the Virus Scanning (nortons) to see if that could be the cause, and during the middle of that scan, the rig reboots. I run the scan again, and the system is clean.

Basically, at this point, I did not think it was Heat related, nor did I believe it was Memory related, as my memory is reliable Crucial that is not being overclocked, and Sandra burn-in tests were fine. I was able to complete Spyware/virus scanning, so I think that is a dead-end, and I did not add any new drivers/apps in the past week that could have potentially caused this.

That leaves me with the PSU. Now, Antec is a name brand, and it is fairly new. I am not up on how to reading voltage rails, but in order to troubleshoot, I picked up the following voltage numbers from my PSU (through Sandra 2003/Bios):

+3.3 : 3.23
+5 : 5.00
+12 : 11.48
-12 : -12.61
-5 : -4.35
standby : 5.00

Now, again, I am not up on what these rails mean. I know that I should be within 10%, of which one number (-5) does not fit, but I do not know if these numbers means my PSU is failing.

Bottomline, I am trying to troubleshoot this to see if I can confirm if my PSU is the culprit, or if there is something else I need to look at.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Sammy5gs

 

[KGB]

First thing: Turn off the "restart on error" option in XP.

Second: Does anything show up in Event Viewer?
Could be clues in there.

 

[Sammy5000]

Alright yall...

I will be running memtest shortly, but I did check Event Viewer and a Save Dump occurred (Event 1001) when my rig shutdown and rebooted. Here are the three error messages I got in Event Viewer.

0x000000d1 (0x0000000c, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xf7a42f9a)

0x000000d1 (0x0000000c, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xf7a42f9a)

0x000000d1 (0x0000000c, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xbabd5f9a)

Any ideas? I tried to do a search on Google/Microsoft and could not find anything specific to this message?

 

[BG4533]

According to Intel specs, your PSU should hold its voltages with 5%. If those numbers you gave were at idle, your PSU could be suspect. Sandra is a bit unreliable and the bios is good, but there is no way to stress the system in the bios. Download Motherboard Monitor 5 and use that to watch your voltages while running Prime95 and something to get your HDs going. If you have a multimeter, test the PSU with it.

 

[Angrymarshmello]

Have you patched the system for the blaster worm? That's what it sounds like to me (if it's non hardware)

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.html

 

[Sammy5000]

Originally posted by: Angrymarshmello
Have you patched the system for the blaster worm? That's what it sounds like to me (if it's non hardware)

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.html

I had downloaded the patch a few days ago, but to make sure I downloaded the symantec app that finds/gets rid of it and it did not find it. Also, when the shutdowns occurred, it did not give me the 60 second wait window, like the Blaster worm is supposed to give. It just shuts down.

 

[MSUman]

My PC had the same problem some time ago..... what I discovered was that it was my overclock causing some weird thing to happen in the pc and reboot... I just lowered it down a bit and it solved the issue.... It may be your issue being that you said you just overclocked it not to long ago.....

MSUman

 

[mechBgon]

Yeah, try reverting to stock speed, and if you're there already, try running Memtest86 to test your memory modules.

The computer isn't stuck in a restricted space where the case can't get cool air, is it?

 

[Sammy5000]

Originally posted by: mechBgon


The computer isn't stuck in a restricted space where the case can't get cool air, is it?

Memtest has been running for over 1 hour, and no errors yet. As far as where the rig is, it is a carpeted, air-conditioned room. Is there anyplace I can check the status of the bugcheck messages that was in my Event Log (up above).

 

[HellHawk]

Hrmm, I was just about to post about this too. I'm have the exact same problem. The only difference is that my rig is the other end of the spectrum...

I'm using the following:

300 Watt Antec PSU
AMD XP 1700+
MSI K7266 Pro 2-A
1 Gig of Memory (256 Crucial, 256 Corsair, 512 Centon) An ugly mix, I know. Never had issues though.
GF3 TI-500
NIC
Adaptec 2940W
SB Live
60 gig HD

PLenty of cooling. I run on avg 33-35 during normal usage. That's CPU temps.

Only commonalities I can find between us is the possibility of software. I'm using Win XP, SP1 with every possible latest update. This start happening to me about 2-3 days ago. I had 2-3 reboots in one day. Then it was fine for 24 hours. Then I had about 6 in a row this morning. One even happened at the windows login screen in safe mode.

Now it's been up for 20 minutes and waiting to see what happens.

Very, very odd.

My next idea was to run memtest too..

 

[Sammy5000]

I finally got the BSOD. Here is what it said:



DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL



*** XXX Stop: 0x000000D1 (0x0000000C, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xF7952F9A)

***LHIDUSB.SYS - Address F7952F9A Base At F794E000.



Any more clarification on what this means?

 

[Jojo7]

Well, it looks like that file is related to a logitech usb mouse. Are you using any usb devices? Is there any way you could eliminate them and see if you still have the problem?

To me, it sounds like windows is having a problem with that mouse driver and it's automatically rebooting the system.

--Jojo

 

[GiLtY]

Sorry to butt into this thread, but I'm running into similar problems too. Anyone have insights as to what might be the cause?

--GiLtY

 

[Sammy5000]

Gilty...

I updated my Logitech driver on my MX300 (9.78 mouseware), but I switched to Windows 2000 shortly thereafter, so I was not able to confirm if this was the true culprit. As you can see above, it could be a number of issues - have you gotten an Error MEssage/BSOD yet? If so, what is it.

 

[ianbergman]

I have also been experiencing a similar problem, although with much less frequency -- I thought I had it solved when I replaced my primary hard drive, but it appears not.

The best I have been able to determine (I am certain ALL hardware in the system is just fine) is that one of the WinXP NTFS or IDE drivers farts out when there are too many processes simultaneously accessing the hard drive. The best simulation I can get is to hop on a P2P program (edonkey works best), and start downloading several hundred files simultaneously. That's the most reliable way of forcing a crash. Copying five or six large blocks of data at once between hard drives - there are five in my system - also tends to do it.

Some things I've noted: the fewer HDs in my system, the more stable it is. How they are hooked up (I've tried the mobo IDE, as well as 3 different PCI IDe cards in different slots) is completely irrelevent. I have a lot of trouble causing a crash with only one HD in, but with all five running, I can bring the machine down in a matter of hours, or minutes using one of the methods described above. There is no possibility that this is a heat or power issue.

I get a few different error messages in my blue screens, but alas, they're not much help. Sometimes NTFS.sys is blamed, sometimes some of the Norton Antivirus drivers...
Also, I can't get it to crash in safe mode. It's got to be somewhere outside the core Windows system.

Sammy, you mentioned you were also using NortonAV. I have not yet attempted to completely remove Norton (I lost the install media ages ago, so I'd rather avoid this), but could that be a common thread between all of us having this issue? Symantec's support site doesn't give any indication that this is a known problem, but you never know.

It would be great if this was more widespread than just my computer... hopefully one fix could work for all of us!

The biggest problem is I can't remember exactly when this problem started, but it was some time ago.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Sammy5000
I finally got the BSOD. Here is what it said:



DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL



*** XXX Stop: 0x000000D1 (0x0000000C, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xF7952F9A)

***LHIDUSB.SYS - Address F7952F9A Base At F794E000.



Any more clarification on what this means?

I helped a guy a few months back that was pulling his hair out over similar issues and it was indeed the Logitech drivers, had him update to the latest and viola' trouble over

 

[GiLtY]

The error is like this (copied it from another thread):

STOP: 0x000000A (0xE13AA088, 0X00000002, 0x00000000, 0x80462733) IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR _EQUAL

Address 90462733 base at 80400000, Datestamp 3ee6c002 - ntoskrnl.exe


Here's my problem (along with BSOD):
I bought a Western Digital HDD a couple of days ago. After installing Win2k on it, I proceeded to add another Hard Drive I had, which also had an operating system on it (Win2k). After I've done that the computer has been acting weird. By weird I mean it would restart itself when I try to enter into a folder, or it would warn me that the memory block cannot be written and restarts. I removed the second Hard Drive (Non-Westerdn Digital one), and the problem persists, what gives.

I think my problem might be: Bad RAM/HD or overheating CPU, but my CPU has been running around the 40/50 degree, so the overheating is not very severe. Therefore I ruled out that possibility. Today I'm going to exchange the HDD and try installing it again, if BSOD came up during installation I'll take out my RAM stick one at a time to see if it's indeed the RAM problem.

--GiLtY

 

[DAPUNISHER]

A. This is usually due to an error in the boot.ini file. The entry for NT is either missing or incorrect. Edit the boot.ini file and check the entry for NT is correct, for example for an IDE disk the entry should look something like

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\winnt="Windows NT workstation"

Check that disk and partition are correct. If you have recently added a new disk or altered the partitions try changing the disk() and partition() values. If you are sure everything is OK, then the actual file may be corrupt so copy NTOSKRNL.EXE off of the installation CD onto the %systemroot%/system32 directory.

You may need to edit the boot.ini if Linux is installed onto a system. During installation DiskDruid (Red Hats disk configuration utility) may create a primary partition (depending on disk configuration) and although the extended NT partition was there first (and at the beginning of the disk), the primary partition affects the numbering of the partition() parameter of boot.ini. Changing it from (1) to (2) (for example) allows the successful boot of NT.

 

[GiLtY]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

A. This is usually due to an error in the boot.ini file. The entry for NT is either missing or incorrect. Edit the boot.ini file and check the entry for NT is correct, for example for an IDE disk the entry should look something like

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\winnt="Windows NT workstation"

Check that disk and partition are correct. If you have recently added a new disk or altered the partitions try changing the disk() and partition() values. If you are sure everything is OK, then the actual file may be corrupt so copy NTOSKRNL.EXE off of the installation CD onto the %systemroot%/system32 directory.

You may need to edit the boot.ini if Linux is installed onto a system. During installation DiskDruid (Red Hats disk configuration utility) may create a primary partition (depending on disk configuration) and although the extended NT partition was there first (and at the beginning of the disk), the primary partition affects the numbering of the partition() parameter of boot.ini. Changing it from (1) to (2) (for example) allows the successful boot of NT.

Can someone give me a quick explanation on what each of the thing means? I have a vague idea but I want to make sure I got it down right.

--GiLtY

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I would just go straight to copying the NTOSKRNL.EXE off of the installation CD to the %systemroot%/system32 directory.

 

[RedCOMET]

Hey all,

I have somewhat of a similiar problem with my rig. But it sometimes locks up while accessing the the bios or when trying to load up windows.
I also some how corrupted the %systemroot\system32\config\ folder or file as windows puts it. Any way to solve this issue, ,seeing how i used to get the random reboots from time to time like the other people in this thread.

thanks