System instability

[webada]

Since it crashes ONLY with web browsers, its hard to say this is hw issue. What links were you clicking? does it contain flash? video?
is everything else ok? ie, playing DVD, mpeg, mp3 or gaming ok?

But since you insist that you have scanned for spyware/virus, I will have to assume everything is ok there.

At this point then, I would point to PSU. Do you have a separate connector for the fans on your psu to MB? Is fan blowing loud?

 

[RebateMonger]

As noted, extended tests of memory and hard drives iare always a good place to start when complete system failures occur.

Beyond that, a frequent cause of random reboots are low-level drivers. In particular, video, sound, and network drivers. All of those can cause random system crashes for no apparent reason.

Overheating is fairly easy to detect. It'll always be time-dependent. If you get a crash, and then if you restart and get a near-immediate second crash, then it's an overheating problem.

 

[imported_slyadams]

Thanks for the help chaps.

Freezes generally occur, and when I reboot, I'll have a few hours before the next one.

I have now disabled my onboard sound in the BIOS and disabled the windows Audio service and have had another freeze.

I did do lots of memtest runs (overnight) with no failures, and have put a new HDD (and thus new windows installation in).

So it could be power or motherboard?

 

[imported_slyadams]

Had another crash. The only temp that was high was the Aux, but I've read on a few other forums that on the P5B, the Aux sensor is bogus.

Can't really think what else it could be apart from something on the mobo or the PSU.

 

[RebateMonger]

Be sure that your disk drive cabling is solid. I had a client with a Server that would "randomly" reboot. One day, it rebooted five times in a single day. It turned out that the SATA data cable was a tiny bit loose. When the drive disconnects, you won't get any error messages in the Event Log. It'll just crash.

I had a similar problem with a loose power cable to an IDE drive. It'd just randomly quit, freezing the PC.

 

[imported_slyadams]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Be sure that your disk drive cabling is solid. I had a client with a Server that would "randomly" reboot. One day, it rebooted five times in a single day. It turned out that the SATA data cable was a tiny bit loose. When the drive disconnects, you won't get any error messages in the Event Log. It'll just crash.

I had a similar problem with a loose power cable to an IDE drive. It'd just randomly quit, freezing the PC.

Thanks mate, I'll check them all.

I've had 3 crashes today. ALL were when I was clicking a link in either IE or Firefox. I'm at my wits end and I'm struggling to get work done.