OK, this is an unusual problem I think. about 2 months ago my brother got really pissed with me so he decided to pull all the plugs out from the back of my PC, video card, sound card, everything. Now this has happened 8 times, I have been sitting at my pc listening to music, doing graphics and word processing (not at the same time, these are the things i was doing at the time of the crashes) and my pc has just randomly crashed and rebooted, happened 5 times, so I decided to reinstall windows, did that work, no, it has happened 3 times since the fresh install. Would anyone be able to tell me what it is, because if I can find out what is the problem (hopefully not hardware) I can get him to pay for the repairs.
cheers
hynesy :wave:

if he pulled out those cables while the pc was still running then maybe its a symptom of an incomplete shutdown, which you can fix by going into Start>Run>cmd then type in chkdisk /f

Describe the crash? bsods etc?

check drivers and also temperatures and voltages of the PC..

you know you could always put the PC in a locked cupboard and snake an kvm extension cable through it...

It hangs for like 3 seconds then the screen goes black and im back at the bios info at start up, it starts up and all is well, untill it happens again:s, the temps are for my CPU prescott P4 3.00ghz is roughly 60c which is what itsd always been, my system temp is 34-40 and my GPU is about 50 too.
PS: I am running check disk now
cheers
hynesy:wave:

I didnt get any problems from disk check on either of my hard drives, any more suggestions?

Slap your brother and tell him to build / buy you a new computer :haha:

there's part of your problem there.. go into bios and confirm this...

Prescott's are known to run hot, 60-75 is still bearable but you risk your PC having a meltdown.. i've managed mine to keep below 40`C (avg 30-38) even with stock HSF. I suggest before you do anything is to clean out the dust in the PC and have a look at the actual HSF assembly ontop of the CPU and see if its been damaged or dirty. Keeping the temps down on the PC is critical.. especially with the summer we're about to get down here..


Download Speedfan and run it. Post up a screenshot or write down the temperatures and voltages while your PC is doing nothing, and again post the results when you're doing something intensive (game or virus scan etc).

open up C:\Windows\Minidump and post any that has appeared (just 5 of the newest ones). If you don't have any, go to My computer icon, right click it > properties> advanced tab> startup and recovery [settings]
-uncheck "automaticaly restart"
-Write debugging information > select complete memory dump (drop down box)

u can also go to my computer properties den on advanced go to startup and recovery options and unchek the restar on system faliure this way a blue stop screen wil cum up tellin u abt the error and possibly the driver or wotever caused it

Is your little brother still under warranty? If so take him back and demand a new one...lol

:haha: that's funny

I will uncheck reboot on system failure, but however for the time being i have a windows minidmp for anyone to look at who knows. after sending an error report the microsoft website pops up saying it was caused by a fault in the systems random access memory.
cheers
hynesy :wave:
PS I am writing this jsut after another failure, and sorry for the late reply, i wasnt notified my email like I normally am.

Just a temp comparision, this is an old one (6-12 months old): http://s20.photobucket.com/albums/b228/hynesydave/?action=view&current=speedfan2.jpg (I think that was taken in winter some time)
this is the latest one:http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b228/hynesydave/syst.jpg (this one is the neew one, its currently summe rin australia for those who dont know )

Also once the pc rebooted i sent a serious error report to microsoft and is brought up this website after. http://oca.microsoft.com/en/response.aspx?SGD=507ceda2-790f-46ba-9b79-5a6b6bbed391&SID=603
cheers

the old speedfan screenshot showed something really weird.. from me squinting, but those voltages arn't looking right.. it could be just a sensor-software glitch but possibly just confirm the reading via booting into BIOS.. but yeh, those new temps screenshot are a bit hot.. did you get a chance for some dusting?

minidump read (attached) -
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA (50) ....->memory_corruption

could be caused by two things, power problems or bad RAM.. check your PSU to see if it matches requirements for your PC by using a calculator as such then checking the actual PSU sticker itself (beware of generic brands..) then have a read of this: Tutorial: How to use Memtest

Thanks for the reply N3051M, the power supply says it can handle 400W, but i think its a crappy generic, but according to a PSU calculator, i only need 250W or something close to that, I ran the windows memory test, the advanced scan 2 times by booting off cd

Also the temps arent normally that high, i think its just because of summer, because once dusk rolled around, only but 2 went to normal, tmep. 2 and 3, and what should the voltages be?

the generic PSU should have enough overkill to take on a 250w system so i think its ok, unless its a bit old, which would make it close to about ~350w guess-timation..

i'll go one better and show you what mine looks like right now.. in terms of temperatures, its night time, and mine peaks about 49`c when the CPU is in full crunch for a few minutes or so. The room's window is closed so its slightly toasty in my room, the pc is a minute idling, i'm cheating slightly by using a zalman cooler instead of a stock (but its on silent mode=slowest) so its about same or less than the stock in your profile.

the voltages should look like the ones i circled in blue, and roughly deviate about 5%-10% and should be as close to the actual voltages as possible..

to get a more accurate reading is to look inside BIOS hardware monitor page and it will show you more accurate than these readings right now.

So i gather memtest using my instructions work without errors?

we'll see how this goes first before digging deeper.. and please use the edit button like Howard's ask you to where possible

Thanks again for the reply N3051M, I am about to run Memtest86, but here are my voltages and temps:
Voltages
Vcore - 1.29v
VddQ - 1.48v
VDIMM - 2.52v
+12 - 11.61v
Vcc5 - 4.99v
VBAT - 3.23v
5VSB - 4.83v
Temps.
CPU - 62c/145F
North Bridge - 40c/105F
Magicduct - 52c/127F (built in heat removal on the mother covering core components)
Smart CPUfan temp. - 30c/86F
Smart systfan1 temp. - 40c/104F
(These have all been taken for my BIOS).
I have attached my latest speed fan screen shot, sorry that it is small, i bigger)
cheers
hynesy:wave:

voltages are ok, a tiny bit under, but still within reason. Just watch this space in the future.

i think you should have your temps as second priority to fix after you resolve the constant crash issue, since 60` would still be workable in the short run. You may need to consider cleaning your PC and tying up loose cables, putting extra cooling and/or replacing the intel HSF with something alot more better. Just suggestions for you..

we'll have a look at the memtest first, but more than likely its possibly due to it..

Just with the memtest, do I have to run it off a bottable floppy, because I think I run it on XP wonce but I can't this time, and I don't have any floppy's but will be picking some up today. With my temps. do you think I should change the heatsink and fan on the processor first or add extra system cooling?
cheers
hynesy:wave:
Thanks again for the help N3051M

you can either use the CD or the floppy, whichever is more convenient for you. Its independent of having winxp available, since it uses its own DOS OS to run the test, before you go anywhere near windows. Just make sure your boot priority is set to the drive you're booting from.

Its really up to you.. case fans do the cooling overall inside the case, the cpu HSF does the cooling for the CPU.. your ambient temps don't look too bad (it depends on room temps + the heat inside the box) so you can add an extra fan if you wish to push some air, but i think its just the cpu fan and heatsink that you need to replace..

I can't get it to work in dos, can you give me a little help? I don't normally use dos. With the temps. it is 33c in my compute room at the moment, and its only 10:30am, so it can get alot higher. Also, my computer is quite noisy, should i use the pen trick to stop a fan to see which creates the noise?
thanks
hynesy

sorry, been a bit busy..

It should load up like a winxp cd, except that it runs the program automatically (blue background, white writing) and start testing immediately. did you burn it as a bootable cd and select booting from it? Otherwise if you still want to use floppy go ahead and do so..

don't bother.. chances are its the stock intel CPU fan you got running at max 6k rpm..

I ran the memtest, it picked up nothing, so I thought I would try taking a ram stick out, eliminate one of the two sticks, went well for 2 days them bam, the infamous blue screen of death appeared. The other ram i replaced that one with BSOD'd too, but this time, both call it driver fault, now I am really confused