Reboot?

ADI2000 wrote on 2/6/2003, 5:43 PM
Hello,

I've had a problem with my pc rebooting on its own since I'd purchased it early last year. The machine is just about a full year old now, and it is fairly powerful - quite adequate for NLE.
I originally had Win ME installed (I didn't want to upgrade all of my old software to Win 2K or XP compatibility at first) - I have since upgraded to Win 2K Pro. There are several actions of which I'm aware that will cause the machine to restart: I have one of those call boxes which allows you to accept a brief call while online -I've had the machine reboot upon receipt of a call while logged on. Additionally, and perhaps more relevant to this forum; I've had my machine reboot when clicking or selecting an event within the VV3 timeline. Most recently, I've discovered that clicking the tabs on in the preferences properties box (options>preferences>video/audio/edit/CD settings, etc.) in VV3 will cause an almost guaranteed reboot.
I've been back and fourth to the pc builder; I've had a new, higher wattage power supply installed as a possible fix recently. They've blamed this issue on software conflicts, Microsoft, and virtually everything falling beyond their liability. Does anyone have an idea what might be causing this tormenting problem? I would be much obliged.


Thanks,

Steve M.

Comments

dmcmeans wrote on 2/6/2003, 6:08 PM
Steve,

It's not an AMD box is it? I've had some software compatibilities with AMD that's caused me to shy away from their products (no matter how attractive the prices).

Perhaps a description of your PC would trigger a thought for us.

David
ADI2000 wrote on 2/6/2003, 7:59 PM
Hey David,

My pc is a Pentium (4) 1.8 gig, 768 megs of DDR-ram, 20 gig master hard drive, 120 gig slave hard drive. I have a 64 meg video card, and a Creative Audigy sound card with built-in IEEE 1394. I have a seperate 3 port IEEE 1394 input, and several banks of USB inputs - all of which are in use. In addition, I have a Pioneer A103 DVD burner, as well as a seperate cd-burner. I just upgraded my power supply to 400 watts, and I have a multitude of cooling fans within the case. Again, currently I am running Windows 2000 Professional, I experienced the rebooting problems with WIndows ME as well earlier.
Hope this helps somewhat. I appreciate your help.

Thanks,

Steve M.
MBerger wrote on 2/6/2003, 10:06 PM
Besides starting from the ground up and making sure you have Service Pack 3, DirectX 9, Windows Media Player 9.0, make sure you also have any driver updates that could be out there (i.e. video and sound card, mobo, bios, or external USB/Fire wire device driver). Have you tried unplugging all the external USB devices you have installed (except for any mouse or keyboard) and then booting your system? Make sure it is not a conflict with a printer/scanner or webcam you may have installed on the machine. These have been known to cause unexplained crashing/rebooting.
mikkie wrote on 2/7/2003, 9:31 AM
If it happened in ME, then chances are it's not a software issue. Suggestions include...

Get the make and model off the various pieces of hardware in your box and search the web for any tips or problems. Do the same for the motherboard's chipset itself.

Run one of those software utilities for benchmarking or burnin or anything that stresses your system & see if you can come up with something that *always* causes a crash. Otherwise make due with one that almost always works.

Try turning stuff off. Start in safe mode and see if you can crash the system. If so, tinkering with driver settings and such will likely do no good. If it won't crash in safe mode, try turning off or removing hardware in windows one at a time, turn video card acceleration off, that sort of thing.

The method recomended by the overclockers (not that you've overclocked, but they deal with system stability more then most): Disconnect everything possible from the motherboard, like your slave drive, the CD & DVD drives etc, so all you have is the graphics card, the boot drive, & one stick of RAM. If the system still crashes, swap the ram & try again. If it still crashes, you pretty much need spare parts or another PC to start swapping parts with. If it doesn't crash, then add stuff one at a time until it does and you've found your problem.

If you hadn't already swapped out the power supply I'd say to look there first. Still might not hurt to buy one locally and see if it helps - can always take it back if not. Also, make sure you've got adequate cooling in your case, that everything's not getting too hot - you might be able to monitor the temperatures as most newer m/boards have built in sensors. Get something like Motherboard Monitor free and see if it's getting too hot when it dies. There are quite a few sites that deal with cooling online, so it shouldn't be hard to find out exactly what too hot is for your P4.

luck
mike