Windows unwanted restart...

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XtR-X

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Windows just happens to restart at no particular time on my friend's computer. He has Win Xp Home with every single Windows patch... it's usually about a couple hours apart each restart on average... what could be the cause of this?

Thx.
 
Check your event log in control panel under admin tool....System event....Look for error....XP restarts after fatal errors....Quick question....Ever scan disk then defrag?
 
disable that reboot on fatal error junk, then next time it does it you'll see the BSOD, its likely driver related. If you do that and still get no BSOD, just a reboot, it could then be several things, including the PSU or a bad connection somewhere.
 
Hrmm... well it's basically a new computer, he hasn't had it for more than a week... I haven't ran scan disk or defrag yet...

StormBringer, by disabiling the restart on fatal error stuff, what do you mean? Like the BIOS (I believe there's something like that in the bios...) or like is there something in Windows to do that...? If so where..?
 
to disable restart when fatal error occurs:

right click on MY COMPUTER click on PROPERTIES, click on ADVANCED tab, click on SETTING under STARTUP AND RECOVERY, in the next screen, uncheck AUTOMATICALLY RESTART under SYSTEM FAILURE.

This is how I do it on my comp, i'm using WIN XP PRO with defualt setups.
 
Originally posted by bneumohr
to disable restart when fatal error occurs:

right click on MY COMPUTER click on PROPERTIES, click on ADVANCED tab, click on SETTING under STARTUP AND RECOVERY, in the next screen, uncheck AUTOMATICALLY RESTART under SYSTEM FAILURE.

Yea, what he said. heh. Thats exactly what I was refering to.
 
Guys. The problem is continuing now for my friend. At first he got no error messages. Now he is getting error messages. He told me this over the phone:

"NVIDIA System Sentinel is not recieving sufficient power"

He does have an NVIDIA grpahics card, a eVGA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra to be exact...

What could this lead to? Bad power supply? What other options?
 
It means that your power supply isn't supplying enough power to your graphics card...you might need a higher wattage PSU.
 
Originally posted by me(who else?)
It means that your power supply isn't supplying enough power to your graphics card...you might need a higher wattage PSU.

Yes, I kinda realized that. But I want to make sure that there aren't any other probably causes. There could be hidden causes, or other things to consider.

He also has "every so-often" system hangs, freezes, loss of mouse, performance isn't sacrificed except when these things happen of course.

Claims computer is fast, and it running well except for the crashes/hangs/loss of input devices.

Admin tools->Event Log->Some errors:

Application Error Category: 101 Event 1002
Application Error Category: none Event 1000


In system:

Source: NV Event: 101 Cat: none
Source: Disk Event: 11 Cat: none
Source: atati Event: 5 Cat: none
 
Does the fx5600 need to be supplied power straight from the PSU ? Maybe the connection is a bit loose.
 
It sounds a lot like an insufficient power supply to me.

Many newer video cards (including the fx5600) do require a direct connection to the PSU due to the demands of its components not being met by the AGP slot's power alone.
 
UPDATE:

Alright guys, so here's what happens. I do a memory test and his memory is all good. That's all I had time for the last time for the memory test.

I downloaded Xteq Setup tool and I messed with some settings like an advanced setting that disabled restart, which was bad because instead of restarting, it gave blue screens of death.

So what's next to consider that could be faulty?
 
Originally posted by StormBringer
What did the BSOD say? BSODs actually give you usefull(if not cryptic) info about the problem.

I forget exactly what it said. To me a BSOD is just a BSOD. I usually don't look at them b/c they usually have number and letter combos like:

0938fd8sds093r2n0fd923rn0

I don't remember what his said. But I'll enable the BSOD thing again the next time I see him and I'll write it all down.
 
Two common overlooked causes of hanging are the cpu fan,and overclocking the cpu.
Other than that,as mentioned before, the psu.
And last,but far from least,the dreaded harddrive.
I once had a seagate which caused my set to hang.

Cheers
Raticus
 
I've had a very similar problem since getting my new Gateway XP machine about 7 months ago. It would reboot sometimes when I would do a mouse-click or hit a key. Once the reboot was complete and I logged back in, a window would pop up telling me the PC had recovered from a serious error and would then ask me if I wanted to send an error report to Microsoft. Miscrosoft then sends back a web page called "Online Crash Analysis". Invariably, would generically say a device driver caused the problem. Eventually, those reports began identifying my NVidia driver as the problem and sometimes "Simplisoft CD Creator" driver as the problem. I have now updated drivers for both and for the most part my reboot problems have cleared up. NOW I have to reload XP though because it has some "issues" which undoubtedly were caused when one of the unwanted reboots would take place while I was installing something or uninstalling something or even doing a system recovery! Currently, I'm using NVidia 5.6.6.4 drivers and the Simplisoft driver update can be found here: http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=DownloadQualifiedAfsinst . Good luck, dood.
 
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