Disclaimer: This is meant as a simple guide for troubleshooting crashes. If you need more advanced debugging/diagnosing, check the links at the bottom of this post.
Random Rebooting/Shutdown Info:
For those of you who experience system instability resulting in crashes, reboots, or BSOD's, the following should help explain possible causes.
A seemingly (or not quite so) random reboot is initiated by either the hardware (BIOS) or OS. A hardware reboot/shutdown is most often caused by overheating (cpu, mem, or vga) or faulty motherboard components (reboot and check temps in bios health screen). A reboot initiated by XP is caused by a driver, service, or device that operated outside the parameters set by windows.
In order to further investigate whether the reboot is initiated by the BIOS or XP, you should also disable XP from automatically restarting in case of a BSOD (blue screen of death). To do this, first navigate to the System Properties applet (right-click My Comp on desktop, click properties; or find in Control Panel). In the advanced tab, click "Startup and Recovery." In the popup dialog box, uncheck "Automatically Restart" under system failure (also set dump file size to small 64kb if you plan on debugging the dump files).
BSOD's:
Now, the next time Windows XP crashes, you will be given a BSOD that will help point you more in the right direction. For more information about XP error codes, see links below. If it states a device driver (usually a sys file) or a device, try seeing if a newer (or older driver, in some cases) is available. Most often, a device driver isn't compatible with SP2, so an updated one is necessary.
BSOD's regarding resources (IRQ's, memory pooling, etc.) usually are caused by advanced BIOS settings. Advanced memory settings or high o/cing can cause memory pool corruption, and IRQ errors can be caused by BIOS hardware resource assignments or fixed by moving the expansion card (currently assigned to conflicting IRQ port) to another slot.
It should also be mentioned that many BSOD's can be caused by a bad PSU or faulty components. It's always worth a try to switch out hardware if you have a replacement to see if there is an improvement. Also, updating your motherboard BIOS can also help get rid of crashes.
BSOD's from software can be much harder to diagnose, unless it is obvious which program initiates the crash. Further diagnosis can be done by debugging the dumpfiles (usually created in c:\windows\minidump) created by XP in the event of a crash to help determine the exact cause.
More Info/Links:
Since there is so much specific information on the internet regarding specific error codes and debugging methods, I won't delve any deeper. Instead, here some links that should prove useful:
Article detailing troubleshooting error codes
An even more indepth article regarding error codes
Debugging:
General guide on debugging dumpfiles
Debugging tools 32bit
Debugging tools 64bit
"Symbols" general information
Symbols download
(you need to download the debugging "symbols" if you plan on debugging offline; otherwise, you connect to the microsoft server symbol via commandline)
Random Rebooting/Shutdown Info:
For those of you who experience system instability resulting in crashes, reboots, or BSOD's, the following should help explain possible causes.
A seemingly (or not quite so) random reboot is initiated by either the hardware (BIOS) or OS. A hardware reboot/shutdown is most often caused by overheating (cpu, mem, or vga) or faulty motherboard components (reboot and check temps in bios health screen). A reboot initiated by XP is caused by a driver, service, or device that operated outside the parameters set by windows.
In order to further investigate whether the reboot is initiated by the BIOS or XP, you should also disable XP from automatically restarting in case of a BSOD (blue screen of death). To do this, first navigate to the System Properties applet (right-click My Comp on desktop, click properties; or find in Control Panel). In the advanced tab, click "Startup and Recovery." In the popup dialog box, uncheck "Automatically Restart" under system failure (also set dump file size to small 64kb if you plan on debugging the dump files).
BSOD's:
Now, the next time Windows XP crashes, you will be given a BSOD that will help point you more in the right direction. For more information about XP error codes, see links below. If it states a device driver (usually a sys file) or a device, try seeing if a newer (or older driver, in some cases) is available. Most often, a device driver isn't compatible with SP2, so an updated one is necessary.
BSOD's regarding resources (IRQ's, memory pooling, etc.) usually are caused by advanced BIOS settings. Advanced memory settings or high o/cing can cause memory pool corruption, and IRQ errors can be caused by BIOS hardware resource assignments or fixed by moving the expansion card (currently assigned to conflicting IRQ port) to another slot.
It should also be mentioned that many BSOD's can be caused by a bad PSU or faulty components. It's always worth a try to switch out hardware if you have a replacement to see if there is an improvement. Also, updating your motherboard BIOS can also help get rid of crashes.
BSOD's from software can be much harder to diagnose, unless it is obvious which program initiates the crash. Further diagnosis can be done by debugging the dumpfiles (usually created in c:\windows\minidump) created by XP in the event of a crash to help determine the exact cause.
More Info/Links:
Since there is so much specific information on the internet regarding specific error codes and debugging methods, I won't delve any deeper. Instead, here some links that should prove useful:
Article detailing troubleshooting error codes
An even more indepth article regarding error codes
Debugging:
General guide on debugging dumpfiles
Debugging tools 32bit
Debugging tools 64bit
"Symbols" general information
Symbols download
(you need to download the debugging "symbols" if you plan on debugging offline; otherwise, you connect to the microsoft server symbol via commandline)
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