System Crash - Please help!

Goji wrote on 3/28/2008, 11:39 AM
I've had two instances over the past two days where my system decided to just shut down, while working with Vegas.

Symptoms look like a power failure. I don't think it is, though, as I'm connected to a (newer) UPS.

This system has been running flawlessly for several years.

If anybody has recommendations on what to look for, I'd be much obliged.

Thanks,

Goji

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 3/28/2008, 11:48 AM
It could be a lot of things, but some system crashes are a result of overheating. Do your crashes occur during rendering? You've had the system for several years, have you ever taken the cover off and blown it out with compressed air? Particularly the CPU heat sink.

I suppose it could also be a power supply failure or overload. What exactly are the symptoms? Does the machine simply shut off?
dogwalker wrote on 3/28/2008, 2:49 PM
Give us a little more information, please - motherboard (or at least the chipset), processor (is it a quad core? some people have problems with quad cores), amount of ram, etc. Are your source and destination drives the same? How many usb devices do you have connected (yeah, I know that sounds nuts, but I seem to remember someone making a correlation between usb devices and freezes on some motherboards)?

Also, is there a consistency as to when the crashes happen, such as always during rendering? Or are they random?

If you could test the ram with memtest or prime95, that might give some useful information as well.

As John said, when a system reboots or locks up, it's usually temperature, bad ram, or an insufficient power supply.