PC restarting

[SFilip]

Since recently my PC restarts on random occasions - just all of a sudden I see the BIOS initializing and everything continues booting as if nothing happened.
It seems to happen on completely random occasions (playing a game, typing in a text editor etc.) and not really so often. The first thing that came to my mind was temperature, but it seems stable enough, maximum being ~55C CPU and ~50C MB.

Any ideas?

 

[hobo218]

Power surge?
Sometimes that happens to my computer.

 

[enouwee]

Since recently my PC restarts on random occasions - just all of a sudden I see the BIOS initializing and everything continues booting as if nothing happened.
It seems to happen on completely random occasions (playing a game, typing in a text editor etc.) and not really so often. The first thing that came to my mind was temperature, but it seems stable enough, maximum being ~55C CPU and ~50C MB.

Any ideas?

Memory problems?
Memtest86

 

[Frozenhelfir]

Could be a bad power supply. I had the same problem before, but now I have a new power supply and I don't get random restarts anymore. Except for this new windows security update I got that I can't figure out how to install. Please see my above (or below) post. It's pissing me off too!

 

[elmstfreddie]

I had the same problem, it was a virus.

 

[SFilip]

Thanks people, plenty of things to check out.

> Power surge
Highly unlikely, I have an UPS to prevent these.
It would probably also be visible on some other electrical device if it happened (lightbulb for example).

> Memory problems?
memtest found no errors.

> bad power supply
I guess it's possible that it got damaged somehow, but this makes little sense as some older PCs of mine suffered worse things than this one.

Will do a virus scan also.

 

[waaaks!]

viruses?
my pc keeps on restarting, then virus scanned, problem solved...

 

[w/e]

I don't think it's a virus.
I've recently been having the same problem because I installed an extra gig of RAM that I bought off of newegg. I took it out and the problem went away.

So, I'm thinking hardware problems...

 

[MeRcChRiS]

Maybe you have too much memory and your computer doesn't hold it.

 

[SFilip]

Notice the "since recently" in the first post.
No, I didn't upgrade anything and 512MB doesn't sound like something that can't be handled.

 

[enouwee]

Notice the "since recently" in the first post.
No, I didn't upgrade anything and 512MB doesn't sound like something that can't be handled.

Are you using some extension cards? If the reboots happen "frequently" enough and you can spare some cards for a little testing, it'll help you determine which card might be causing the reboots.

You could also check the PCI latencies and try raising them a little (usually helps reducing noticeable "lag" in video/sound, but it might be effective in this case too, who knows):
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951

Which CPU are you using? I didn't notice before, but 55°C isn't that cool at all, if that's your idle temperature. Older Athlons (T'bird was notoriously unstable at 65°C and the P4s weren't envoying temps > 65°C).

 

[SFilip]

Hm "extension cards"? Forgive my lack of knowledge, but care to elaborate what that might be?

I'm using Intel P4 (2.4GHz). The idle temperature is around 45C, quite reasonable considering the warm weather here (that's how it is ATM with nothing actively working), 55C is the state right one of those restarts.
Now to think of it...on the few occasions this restart did happen so far the temperature was always around 55. However I seriously doubt it can't handle that as I ran some heavy benchmarks when I first bought this PC thus raising the temperature to around 70.
I'll see if I can do one of those again...I also just increased the latency for those devices I have.
Guess I'll just wait and see what happens.

 

[enouwee]

Hm "extension cards"? Forgive my lack of knowledge, but care to elaborate what that might be?

*cough* expansion cards *cough*
PCI, ISA, whatever

I'm using Intel P4 (2.4GHz). The idle temperature is around 45C, quite reasonable considering the warm weather here (that's how it is ATM with nothing actively working), 55C is the state right one of those restarts.
Now to think of it...on the few occasions this restart did happen so far the temperature was always around 55. However I seriously doubt it can't handle that as I ran some heavy benchmarks when I first bought this PC thus raising the temperature to around 70.

55°C under load is pretty reasonable. Mine was stable up to 65°C, but I cleaned it, once the temperature got above 70°C under load. At that point, it started already doing weird things

 

[Lord_Phoenix]

I used to sorta have that problem when I finally built my computer. However, mine was defiantly due to processor overheating due to not understanding how the processor fan works... :/

how old is your computer? Maybe there's something wrong with the BIOS, but if nothing happened to it before, I wouldn't change anything now. Did you add anything recently? That might cause a problem.