Windows 2000 shuts down by itself *UPDATES followed by even more UPDATES*

[Pyxis]

UPDATE BELOW


This problem has been happening for a couple of months now. At first it happened rarely but it shut off twice yesterday and once today.

The problem is that the computer just shuts off at once. No shutdown screen or nothing. It just stops and restarts automatically. This is also worrying me because it might damage my hardrive because when the computer shuts down I can hear the hardrive spinning down.

I haven't changed anything in the computer since I bought it.

I'm running a dual boot system: Win2K and Win98SE (but I rarely go into Win98 any more).

This problem is pissing me off. Yesterday I lost a whole essay that was due the next day (I know, stupid me didn't save it:|).


System Specs:

Dell XPS-B733r
P3-733
128Mb PC800
30Gb Hardrive
Nvidia TNT2 M64
Sony CDRW
Samsung DVD
SMC EZ Card PCI 10 Adapter (SMC1208)




EDIT:

I know this is not a heat problem or it would be doing it more often. Also, I don't know if it's related to this problem or not. I guess that 128Mb of ram is not enough for Win2K. Sometimes my hardrive starts making a thrashing sound when I open some programs. Sometimes it takes a while to open them also; not all the time though. For example, when I try to open IE my hardrive starts making a thrashing noise, and IE doesn't open for at least two minutes. And when I disconnect from playing on a server in Counter-Strike, everything freezes for 3-5 minutes and my hardrive makes the same noise. But as I said I think this problem is related to not having enough ram. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't cause the random Windows shutdowns.

 

[phatstyl]

i didnt have that problem with CS in win2k woth 128mb and 650 cpu, maybe its your HD?
dell has some sweet tech support, try givin them a try
and if you ever wanna play CS, lemme know and i will get some frags in with ya

 

[Choralone]

I hope this may help...

Look in the Control Panel under your System Properties, Advanced tab. Click on the Startup and Recovery button. Look to see if you have Automatically reboot under System Failure checked. If you do anytime a program causes an error your machine will shutdown and reboot itself automatically.

/edit I'm not sure what's going on with your HDD but I'd do a through test with Scandisk for starters. Sounds like your machine is swapping to the HDD a lot since you've only got 128MB RAM. My machine used to page to the HDD all the time before I upgraded to 512MB.

 

[Pyxis]

I was going to give Dell tech support a try tomorrow but I don't have time to spend on the phone. I have so much damn homework this weekend:| I haven't had this much since high school.

 

[Pyxis]

<< I hope this may help...

Look in the Control Panel under your System Properties, Advanced tab. Click on the Startup and Recovery button. Look to see if you have Automatically reboot under System Failure checked. If you do anytime a program causes an error your machine will shutdown and reboot itself automatically. >>




Sweet, I never saw that option before. I hope this helps, I've been trying to chase down this problem for months.

Thanks alot

 

[Choralone]

Very cool. I'd still check out that HDD for the heck of it. You never know...

 

[Pyxis]

I'm about to scandisk the drive now.


I'm also going to buy some PC800 ram pretty soon. I'm just waiting for the price to drop around $60. I'm broke after going on a computer spendind spree this week

 

[Viztech]

Are you saying that the machine just plain reboots?

Often that is a bad power supply or an overheating problem. Leaving the side of the box off will be a good check of the heat theory, and swapping out the power supply for a known good one is the test there.

As far as the drive thrashing, 128 is a bare minimum for Win2k. 192 or 256 is sooo much better!

Good luck

viz

 

[Pyxis]

<<Are you saying that the machine just plain reboots?>>

The machine shuts off without going to the shutoff screen, and it starts rebooting by itself.

 

[networkman]

I've seen some newer keyboards that have a &quot;Power&quot; key on the keyboard, which when pressed will shut the machine down without logging out the network or going thru a proper shutdown sequence. Do you have one of those keyboards(maybe a faulty one)?

I'd also check in the CMOS setup for setting regarding power and/or temperature - perhaps something is set too low or is too narrow a restriction.

 

[JonB]

For me, it was a marginal power supply. Replaced an ultra-cheap 300 with a good 350 (Enermax) and it never happened again. (been six months)

I think that &quot;reboot&quot; option means it would just sit at &quot;BSOD&quot; without restarting, not that it will prevent the BSOD or restart problem.

 

[JHutch]

I'm with JonB. It really sounds like a flaky power supply (though it could be a flaky motherboard that is fluctuating too much on the voltage draw).

Dell tech support is the way to go. Especially if the system is under warranty.

JHutch

 

[Pyxis]

Thanks for all the responses everyone

 

[Pyxis]

Dammit, they have a waiting time of one hour for tech support I guess I'll call tomorrow.

BTW, I do think it is a power supply problem now. I was looking through the bios and notices an option for when there is a power loss. It says either to keep the computer off or return it to previous state, which would be the cause of the reboot.

 

[dingdongdingdong]

it seem the problem you have is the NIC card get conflic try to mve that card to diferent pci slot. do not put it to pci slot one this will get conflic with you AGP card there for it will happen

 

[BadThad]

Pyxis - Just wondering...how is it that your Dell P3-733 can use PC800 RDRAM? I belive you mean PC133 SDRAM.

 

[Pyxis]

<< Pyxis - Just wondering...how is it that your Dell P3-733 can use PC800 RDRAM? I belive you mean PC133 SDRAM. >>




My Dell has an Intel 820 chipset which uses RDRAM. So yes, it does use PC800

 

[Pyxis]

UPDATE

A couple of posts back Choralone told me about an option to uncheck that causes the computer to shut down when there is a system failure. Well after I unchecked it I still have the problem. But this time a BSOD came up and showed me the stop error (stupid me didn't read it though:|).


Anyway I went to the Microsoft site and downloaded their debugging software. I used dumpchk.exe to read the dump log that the system error made. This shows me what the stop error exception address is. Then I downloaded pstat.exe. This program lists all running threads and their load addresses.

The error code which I receive most closely matches the address for ntoskrnl.exe.

Exception address is: 0x8043f5e9 (from another date: 0x8043f5e9)
Load Address of Ntoskrnl.exe: 80400000

The other nearest address is: 80062000 which is hal.dll

I also checked all the previous dump logs and the errors always closely match the address to ntoskrnl.exe.


I guess that the problem has nothing to do with the power supply now since when the error occurs the computer stays at the BSOD (maybe it still does, I'm no expert)




Anyway does anyone know what would cause an error with Ntoskrnl.exe?


I will be calling Dell tech support tomorrow but maybe someone here knows what it is.

 

[phatstyl]

Ntoskrnl.exe
NT (as in wondows nt5 aka win2k)OS (if u dont know what it is leave) krnl (kernel)
just a guess, i doubt its nothing u didnt already figure out
i would re-install

 

[frizzlefry]

Had that happen to a system I worked on a little while ago. I'm pretty sure it's one of two things or both. AGP/PCI conflict or Bad RAM. You will want to swap around your PCI devices a little. Try different arrangements. I think typically (as mentioned before) avoid NIC on slot 1 or 2. I'm not sure how many slots you have but play around with it a little. If you have access to more RAM, swap it and test. Also, you might want to play with settings for AGP in BIOS. Try the most conservative settings first. Buffer 32MB. 1x, 2x, then 4x (if you have these options.

Hope this helps. Let us know what happens.

 

[Pyxis]

Dammit it just happened again. This time I read what it said at the BSOD. The only file name I saw was ks.sys. I searched my computer for it and it's located in the drivers folder.

How do I find out which device uses this driver?

Thanks,
Pyxis

 

[ZodaOmega]

Are you playing games? If so your vid card might be resetting your comp....If it is overheating.

 

[Pyxis]

I play games but the problem usually occurs when I'm doing other stuff.

 

[Pyxis]

Man, I hate waiting on hold for tech support. Right now I'm waiting for a Dell tech, recorded message says that there is a hold time of an hour:|

 

[Pyxis]

Dammit

They won't give me tech support because I didn't get Win2K from them:|

Now I'm real ticked off. I really don't want to do a reinstall