What would cause a system reboot?

AZPaul

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Nov 13, 2003
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I have a system
420w pwr slpy
AMD 2500 XP athon
shuttle A35 ultra 400
1gig ultra ram
x850pro ati
wd 250g hard drive
nec dvd r/w
audigy 2 sound card
3 large fans, side, top back.

What would cause my system to re-boot in the middle of running games or installing software? The ram and video card are new, it was haveing this problem before I up graded. Any ideas?
THX
Paul
 

weilin

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to the sounds of it it reboots under stress. sure you didnt overclock your system a tad too much? open the case and blow out hte dust.. heat can be a problem.
 

Vascular

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Sounds like a powersupply with it just cutting out and rebooting.
You may check a shuttle forum to see if there are any known issues.
 

luminaris

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First thing I would check is the PSU. It may be a sign that its going bad or can't handle the load anymore. Check all the fans in your system particularly the CPU fan and make sure its running and free of dust. If the temp climbs too high, that will certainly cause issues. The only way to really tell what's going on is to remove all the hardware from your system except for the basics and try reinstalling everything until the problem occurs. Another thing you may want to do is if you've gone in and changed settings in the bios previously, default the bios and run it stock to see if it runs better. As I said at first though, sounds like a PSU problem to me. Especially if the machine has been running fine ever since and all of a sudden starts acting up. Keep us posted as to what the outcome is. Good luck
 

kittle

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Also make sure you turn off window's automatic reboot "feature"

then go into your bios and look for a setting like like 'resume after ac power loss' turn this OFF.

if its a software problem, you'll get a blue screen.
if its a heat issue your pc will probably just shut down.
if its a power supply issue, any of the above.

Im assuming youv'e already updated your video, sound and other drivers?
 

AZPaul

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This system of mine has gone hey-wire.
This is the second time I've did a XP install and I keep having the same problems. I get errors installing XP, I get them trying to install games and I get them when down-loading files. I'm installing a new hard-drive because one of my old ones (I have removeable hard drives) wouldnt boot up, every time it tryed to go into windows it would just keep rebooting. It wouldnt even go into safe mode and even before it crashed, while I was playing online games, the game would crash to the desk top or my system would reboot. I even just put in a new dvd-cd burner and I still get errors installing games.
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Normally those kind of reboots are caused by a failing power supply. A reboot with a blue screen that reads "IRQl_NOT_LESS..." is usually a RAM issue. RAM issues can also be caused by faulty power however. And like PAT said, faulty power in the board can be caused by bad capacitors.

Visually inspect the capacitors on your motherboard as shown at www.badcaps.net If you find no problems, it's probably your power supply or RAM.

Now for a little warning on power supplies: I've seen people replace their power supply THREE times and still have power supply problems. The problem was, they were buying faulty power supplies. Always use a quality power supply.

As for RAM issues, these are also typical, especially with generic stuff. Ultra doesn't make anything, they're just a marketing label for TigerDirect, who generally sources generic parts from the cheapest bidder. But many times RAM issues are cured by increasing RAM voltage in BIOS.

So first check the motherboard capacitors, if everything is OK look in BIOS to see if there's a way to increase RAM voltage to 2.8v. If that doesn't help, replace any generic power supply with a quality unit.

And finally, if the new power supply doesn't help, it was a RAM issue. But don't feel bad about replacing both, as poor quality power supplies need to be replaced even when they work, as a precaution against system damage.
 

luminaris

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Yeah I would say its one of three things, burnt run in the board which normally means a bad capacitor, a bad IDE or SATA controller or a bad drive. I would take everything out of the machine except for the bare essentials and see which piece of hardware is causing the issue.
 

coriace689

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I had the same problem with a Ga-7vax mobo from gigabyte and it was driving me crazy!
After a while the mobo died and i found out that two capacitors had leaked and a third one was about to burst open.
Gigabyte like some other mobo makers won't admit it but they bought a batch of cheap capacitors , check this link : http://www.overclockers.com/tips00140/

They replaced the mobo for 50 boxs and it is working fine since then.
Check your motherboard to see if some capacitors have an inflated top.
check this link too!
http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=leaking+capacitors&a...page=1&