Unexplained Crashes

[macabre stalker]

I am experiencing random shut offs with my computer. It will just up and turn off abruptly and then reboot. This machine is less than 3 months old and has been working just fine up until this morning. It has done this 5 times so far, seemingly randomly. The only change of note to it in that time is an installation of the Sims 2 expansion Seasons (previous expansions and the main game have not caused any problems, nor am I convinced Seasons has anything to do with this.)

Overheating doesn't seem to be an issue as my CPU is running at about 42 degrees and other temps seem okay too.

Event viewer shows no errors whatsoever for today except for the most recent one. Seven minutes before my last crash there was a DCOM error:

Unable to start a DCOM Server: {FB7199AB-79BF-11D2-8D94-0000F875C541}. The error:
"The system cannot find the file specified. "
Happened while starting this command:
C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe -Embedding

I'm not sure why it was even looking for Messenger as I have it disabled, but again this error only showed up on the most recent of crashes.

I'm not sure what else to check now.

System Specs:
Intel DG33FB MoBo
2 gigs of 2ghz Mushkin RAM
Intel Core2 Duo 4400
Windows XP Pro with SP 1 & 2
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
FSP SAGA AX450-PN 450W ATX 12V 2.0 Power Supply

Thanks for any help!

 

[Bobbye]

When copying an Error from the event Viewer, it is imperative you include the Event ID# and the Source. This can be done as follows:

Follow this path:
Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Event Viewer> Click on System & Apps, one at a time on the left> look for Errors on the right> right click error> Properties> note description of error, Event# and Source.

There is a "copy" button below the up/down arrows. Click that, then go to any place that allows you to type (ie. notepad, wordpad, this board) and you can paste (use CTRL-V) the entire event details there. It makes for easy reporting of the event.

If you want to paste the Event here, you do not need to include the lines of code that follow the Description- but paste all else. You will be looking for Error that occurs at the time of the problem. Please ignore Warnings.

 

[macabre stalker]

Sorry. Is this what you want?


Event Source: DCOM
Event ID: 10000
Unable to start a DCOM Server

Like I said, that only happened before a later crash and not any other times today.

Thanks.

 

[Bobbye]

Yes, thank you:
From a newsgroup post: "This may have occurred because you manually removed Windows Messenger. What you can do however, is disable the Messenger integration feature in Outlook. To do so, for Outlook (XP/2002), just open Outlook, click the Tools menu, then Options, then the Other tab, and uncheck “Enable Instant Messaging in Microsoft Outlook”. For Outlook Express, close Outlook Express, and run this .reg file (first save the contents to a file with a reg extension):

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express]
"Hide Messenger"=dword:00000002".

So you can handle this without problem.

As for those crashes, suspect the Sims install. But you should be seeing Errors for each of the crashes. Are you looking in both system and Apps in the Event Viewer?

Try doing a System Restore to ate before the Sim install. If that handles it, uninstall then reinstall.