atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC

Print Thread

Rate Thread

Page 1 of 3

Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252656 05/12/08 11:28 AM
Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC Silversam OP Moderator-1A2, Cabling
OP Silversam Moderator-1A2, Cabling Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC	When last we looked in at our hero he had resolved one problem (Accessing the CD/DVD drive caused the system to reboot) only to find another one springing up (PC reboots all the time on its own). So the PC reboots constantly (see earlier posting). I have changed the CD drive and removed roxio and installed nero. So now the drive works, but the PC continues to reboot at random intervals, usually when nothing is going on with it (average, every two or three hours). Before changing the power supply or motherboard (which will have to wait for my return from vacation anyway) I tried an experiment. I formatted a floppy with system files and booted the PC from the floppy. As the floppy is formatted with FAT it can't read the C or D drive (NTFS) or see the cdrom (no drivers) but it is booted to the A prompt. And that's where it's been sitting for 30 hours. I popped out the diskette so in case it rebooted I'd be looking at XP. I'm not. It has not rebooted. It's a new worlds record. So should I assume that it's not hardware, but a problem with the OS (Win XP SP2) or some program and give the whole damn thing an enema and start again? Should I try deleting programs one at a time and then reinstalling them? Anybody have any ideas? I love my MAC but I've got to keep at least one Win machine running here. I'm tempted to go buy a cheap new starter and just start reinstalling programs one at a time. Any and all suggestions are welcome. Sam "Where are we going and why are we in this hand basket?"

Atcom VoIP Phones

Best VoIP Phones Canada

Visit Atcom to get started with your new business VoIP phone system ASAP
Turn up is quick, painless, and can often be done same day.
Let us show you how to do VoIP right, resulting in crystal clear call quality and easy-to-use features that make everyone happy!
Proudly serving Canada from coast to coast.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252657 05/12/08 12:31 PM
Joined: Dec 2007 Posts: 2,033 Columbus, Ohio MacOSX Moderator-Toshiba
MacOSX Moderator-Toshiba Joined: Dec 2007 Posts: 2,033 Columbus, Ohio	Buy a Mac! .... oh wait... never mind I have no real insight on this, only witty comments. :banana: - Tony Ohio Data LLC Phone systems, data networks, firewalls and servers in Central Ohio. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252658 05/12/08 01:07 PM
Joined: Jul 2003 Posts: 1,132 Ann Arbor, MI johnp Member
johnp Member Joined: Jul 2003 Posts: 1,132 Ann Arbor, MI	Sam, I feel you pain brother. I somehow managed to lock myself out of my machine last week. After trying password crackers and removers to no avail, I went and got another drive and did a reinstall on it and copied the data I needed off the old drive. Might be a way for you to go. John P.S. my scsi scanner has outlasted 3 generations of computers and is still going strong. John Support Our 9/11 First Responders Phone Booth Topic: Great song for a great cause http://www.fealgoodfoundation.com/

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252659 05/12/08 02:21 PM
Joined: Nov 2001 Posts: 1,640 Philadelphia Pa suburbs ttech Moderator-NEC
ttech Moderator-NEC Joined: Nov 2001 Posts: 1,640 Philadelphia Pa suburbs	If it an older computer, Take a look at the Capacitors on the Motherboard. Some have poor quality ones, and all you have to do I replace them. I had to replace mine once, my computer was rebooting like yours. Check out www.badcaps.com Nec DSX Aspire UX5000 SV8100 SV9100 SL1100 Certified

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252660 05/12/08 02:44 PM
Joined: Aug 2005 Posts: 631 Southern California PMCook Member
PMCook Member Joined: Aug 2005 Posts: 631 Southern California	Well as a CG who deals with this all the time, I would say you have a driver issue. Bad, corrupt or incompatible drivers or poorly written ones will cause reboots as you described. VIA chipsets and drivers are rather famous for this. You can test this by booting into safe mode. Most likely the offending driver is not loaded and the system will be stable. Bad PSs will shut down and not reboot. You could spend 40 hours trying to fix it or you could back it up and do a clean wipe and reload. Now here is another possibility and that is bad RAM. This is not rare. If you have more than one stick swap them and see if the system either gets worse or stabilizes. If the reload does not fix it, you have bad tag RAM or bad cache RAM and the MB is toast. A bad CPU is highly unlikely, in 20 years I have seen it twice.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252661 05/12/08 03:20 PM
Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC Silversam OP Moderator-1A2, Cabling
OP Silversam Moderator-1A2, Cabling Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC	TTech - I would think that bad caps would reboot the PC whether I was in Windows or DOS & it doesn't reboot in DOS, so..... PMCook - I'll look at the RAM, there used to be a test for ram that you could run, I'll try to find it. Drivers are a possibility. I'll look into them. I guess I'll just start deleting programs and seeing when things clear up. Sam "Where are we going and why are we in this hand basket?"

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252662 05/13/08 05:16 AM
Joined: Mar 2006 Posts: 575 Hawthorne or Melville, New Yor... RobCalltrol Member
RobCalltrol Member Joined: Mar 2006 Posts: 575 Hawthorne or Melville, New Yor...	I'd give it a coffee enema...... The only hardware-type issue might be CPU.... In DOS, with nothing going on, the CPU would probably be just on the safe side, then in Windows with more load (even when "idle" windows has a lot to do) the temp climbs a little higher past the safe zone.... One of the boot CD's that have been discussed in other threads should have some exercising utilities. Also, try booting up knoppix, a bootable CD with a linux variant. With a more active OS running, maybe it'll reboot on ya. At the very least, you'll need it to help recover files from your C drive before it gets formatted. (linux can read NTFS, but has trouble writing it) Rob Cashman Customer Support Engineer

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252663 05/13/08 05:34 AM
Joined: Feb 2005 Posts: 1,037 Stow, Ohio Toshiba Bob Member
Toshiba Bob Member Joined: Feb 2005 Posts: 1,037 Stow, Ohio	Grab an old hard drive and slap a load of your O/S on it and see if your PC reboots. You might get away with a repair load of your O/S depending on what your using. I'd say also a chipset/driver problem. Todays motherboards are fairly cheap so moving up might make sense depending on the other factors of your old box.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252664 05/13/08 05:46 AM
Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City sph Member
sph Member Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City	I didn't read the earlier thread, but there may be another reason for the rebooting. A 3rd party "Service" that cannot load. Services are background programs that load either automatically or on demand and stay loaded. Windows (like most OSs) provides a facility for actions to be taken automatically when Services for whatever reason do not load (This is because most Services are important). The Service provider may have set the particular service to try to load an X number of times, and if unsuccesful to reboot the machine. Is there anything else that hasn't been working properly? If there is, one of its component services may be the culprit. Also, if you are going to use this PC for work, may I recommend you DO NOT get a "cheap starter". You'll indeed end up with one. ALL PC companies will try to sell you an underpowered machine - especially if you go through the home divisions. Any and all software doesn't get simpler - it's as much technical as natural evolution.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252665 05/13/08 06:38 AM
Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City sph Member
sph Member Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City	Some more info that could be helpful Download and run this: boot log analyzer This may tell you what refuses to load on boot. XP generates a boot log, but it's arcane. This software makes it readable. The evaluation version is fully functional. If you have the time, run MSCONFIG, look at Startup, and compare what you don't know in there with this list: Startup List . Who knows, there may be something in there that shouldn't be. But use caution though.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252666 05/13/08 07:06 AM
Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC Silversam OP Moderator-1A2, Cabling
OP Silversam Moderator-1A2, Cabling Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC	SPH - Thanks! Some good ideas there. It'll probably have to wait till I get back from vacation, but it's a good project. No, it's not for work anymore. I've moved my primary focus to the MAC, but there's just some stuff I've got that I'm stuck with a PC. Sam "Where are we going and why are we in this hand basket?"

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252667 05/13/08 08:14 AM
Joined: Jan 2007 Posts: 1,951 Likes: 2 Sioux Falls dagwoodsystems Member
dagwoodsystems Member Joined: Jan 2007 Posts: 1,951 Likes: 2 Sioux Falls	When troubleshooting these kinds of problems, I am initially guided by the error messages logged in the Event Viewer. To see these errors, right-click on My Computer and choose Manage. Click on the [+] sign next to Event Viewer to expand the selection. Post or PM the entries in both Application and System logs that correspond with the CD/DVD access and subsequent reboot. In the meantime, you can prevent your computer from automatically rebooting under these conditions. Right click on My Computer and choose Properties. Click on the Advanced tab and then the Settings button in the Startup and Recovery section (at the bottom of this dialog box). Uncheck Automatically Restart. The next time your machine "wants" to reboot, you will instead see a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) stop code. That code will tell us what's shakin' with the amazing rebooting PC. "Press play and record at the same time" -- Tim Alberstein

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252669 05/13/08 02:55 PM
Joined: Jan 2007 Posts: 1,951 Likes: 2 Sioux Falls dagwoodsystems Member
dagwoodsystems Member Joined: Jan 2007 Posts: 1,951 Likes: 2 Sioux Falls	Awww, don't give up yet...we're almost there! Go back to the System logs in the Event Viewer. Pick one of the 7000 "Error" lines and double-click on it. You'll be presented with something like this: . Click the icon that looks like sheets of paper (just under the up and down arrows); it's the copy button. Paste that info in your next post, puhleezee. Do the same with one of the lines showing the 7009 error. I don't watch much TV, so I need something to do tonight. Otherwise, I'll start chewing my paws. BTW, you'll notice that the screenshot used in this post is from my own machine. The error is related to the "upnphost", which I have purposely disabled. Read about the dangers of Universal Plug and Play at Steve Gibson\'s website "Press play and record at the same time" -- Tim Alberstein

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252670 05/14/08 02:29 AM
Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC Silversam OP Moderator-1A2, Cabling
OP Silversam Moderator-1A2, Cabling Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC	Dagwood - I'm interrupting the packing to get this out (we're leaving for two weeks in a couple of hours). I just had to get a last sundance fix in. Almost all of the 7000 errors were the following: (True Vector) Event Type: Error Event Source: Service Control Manager Event Category: None Event ID: 7000 Date: 5/14/2008 Time: 8:14:44 AM User: N/A Computer: SILVERMAN Description: The TrueVector Internet Monitor service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion. For more information, see Help and Support Center at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. All all of the 7009 were the following: (Timeout) Event Type: Error Event Source: Service Control Manager Event Category: None Event ID: 7009 Date: 5/14/2008 Time: 8:14:44 AM User: N/A Computer: SILVERMAN Description: Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the TrueVector Internet Monitor service to connect. For more information, see Help and Support Center at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. I had one other 7000: (Windows search) Event Type: Error Event Source: Service Control Manager Event Category: None Event ID: 7000 Date: 5/14/2008 Time: 1:07:33 AM User: N/A Computer: SILVERMAN Description: The Windows Search service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion. For more information, see Help and Support Center at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Followed by a 7009 timeout: Event Type: Error Event Source: Service Control Manager Event Category: None Event ID: 7009 Date: 5/14/2008 Time: 1:07:33 AM User: N/A Computer: SILVERMAN Description: Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the Windows Search service to connect. For more information, see Help and Support Center at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Then at 10:54 PM I had a couple of dozen of these guys: (7023 Application not found). Event Type: Error Event Source: Service Control Manager Event Category: None Event ID: 7023 Date: 5/12/2008 Time: 10:54:11 PM User: N/A Computer: SILVERMAN Description: The Application Management service terminated with the following error: The specified module could not be found. For more information, see Help and Support Center at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Thanks again for all the help. If you get over to the Apple or I get over to Upland, drinks are on me. Back in two weeks or so. Sam "Where are we going and why are we in this hand basket?"

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252671 05/14/08 04:12 AM
Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City sph Member
sph Member Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City	TrueVector is a service used by ZoneAlarm. As I mentioned earlier, security-related services almost always reboot the machine after repeated attempts to load. The rationale is, that the PC is useless in the unprotected state anyway, and rebooting it may allow the service to load. Since this Service won't load, many communications-related services (such as MS Search which has the Internet as one of its search domains) will not load either - access to communications being restricted untill TrueVector loads. Solution (any one may do it): 1. Stop ZoneAlarm from monitoring. 2. Uninstall ZoneAlarm, then reinstall 3. Uninstall, then upgrade to ZonaAlarm Pro 4. Just get rid of ZoneAlarm and use the Windows firewall. 5. In Services (Administration Tools) find the TrueVector Service, go to its Properties and see what action the service is instructed to do on failure to load. Change it to "Do Nothing" In this case rebooting will stop, but comms will be most likely crippled Have fun

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252672 05/14/08 04:23 AM
Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City sph Member
sph Member Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City	I should add, that the Applications Management service error is troublesome. Among other things this is the service that controls the "Add/Remove Software" Control Panel. The "module not found" could be refering to the fact that this service also uses comms (when for instance it goes to the Net to find updated drivers). So hopefully this could be remedied by tweaking ZoneAlarm.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252673 05/14/08 07:01 AM
Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC Silversam OP Moderator-1A2, Cabling
OP Silversam Moderator-1A2, Cabling Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC	OK - I turned off Zone Alarm and turned on windows firewall. The wife is off having her nails done. When she gets home we're out of here. Let's see if the machine will stay up. Funny, but I'm sure I tried shutting down ZA and the PC still rebooted. But then again, that may have been a problem with the CDR drive that knocked it out that time. I thought it might be multiple problems. It still might be. Who knows what else is lurking in this machine? When all else fails - Exorcism! Thanks again, Sam "Where are we going and why are we in this hand basket?"

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252674 05/14/08 11:05 AM
Joined: Aug 2005 Posts: 631 Southern California PMCook Member
PMCook Member Joined: Aug 2005 Posts: 631 Southern California	If the PC was being rebooted from an app it would be logged in the Event Viewer. It would be sloppy design to say the least for an app to reboot without a warning so you can save your work beforehand. The lack of the event is indication that your system is spontaneously rebooting due to an unrecoverable fault such as a parity error or a out of bounds memory reference or a function call with a offset or index. Lots of drivers are very sloppily written and often I see this with CD burning software. Classic causes, bad driver, bad DRAM, bad cache RAM, bad tag RAM. The first 2 can be fixed, the second 2 cannot. A bad PS will just shut down. Also, an overheated CPU will cause a shutdown in Intel systems, however a reboot will not occur.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252675 05/15/08 08:58 AM
Joined: Mar 2005 Posts: 97 South Carolina wanebo Member
wanebo Member Joined: Mar 2005 Posts: 97 South Carolina	I suspect bad memory is the culprit here and that your booting from that floppy disk on an OS load that is just a wee bit too small to reach up to where the memory hole is on the chip. Swap out your memory chip with a known good one and see if that works.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252676 05/15/08 04:45 PM
Joined: Mar 2008 Posts: 457 Pottstown, PA 93mdk93 Member
93mdk93 Member Joined: Mar 2008 Posts: 457 Pottstown, PA	Quote Originally posted by dagwoodsystems: BTW, you'll notice that the screenshot used in this post is from my own machine. The error is related to the "upnphost", which I have purposely disabled. Read about the dangers of Universal Plug and Play at Steve Gibson\'s website uhh, i thought that was fixed years ago... "There is one thing and only one thing in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth." - Leo Tolstoy

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252677 05/15/08 05:53 PM
Joined: Jan 2007 Posts: 1,951 Likes: 2 Sioux Falls dagwoodsystems Member
dagwoodsystems Member Joined: Jan 2007 Posts: 1,951 Likes: 2 Sioux Falls	The latest "fix" for uphphost was implemented in March of last year. See https://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS06-011.mspx for details. Windows products are constantly probed for vulnerabilities, so it makes sense for me to disable the unnecessary services. Dramatic, perhaps. But I find comfort with that level of caution. "Press play and record at the same time" -- Tim Alberstein

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252678 05/16/08 06:48 AM
Joined: Aug 2005 Posts: 631 Southern California PMCook Member
PMCook Member Joined: Aug 2005 Posts: 631 Southern California	Just read that some HP and Compaq systems with certain AMD processors have been spontaneously rebooting since their owners installed XP SP3. Some machines reboot endlessly, others less so. https://www.pcworld.com/businesscen...eboot_hell_and_how_to_get_out_of_it.html

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252679 05/16/08 07:25 AM
Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City sph Member
sph Member Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City	Made a mess, see below. Need to take computer class.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252680 05/16/08 07:26 AM
Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City sph Member
sph Member Joined: Oct 2007 Posts: 289 New York City	That's because HP and several other manufacturers shipped machines with unsupported configurations. Microsoft posted an updated version of their warning against using the practice the same day SP3 was released for general distro. This is not new. The same thing had happened with SP2. web page Unlike the mess Microsoft created with Vista SP1, this thing is not their fault.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252681 05/19/08 03:53 AM
Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 1,390 AZ rustynails Member
rustynails Member Joined: Apr 2001 Posts: 1,390 AZ	Did you say you've done a clean install on the OS? That's the only way to eliminate the possibilities of it being software related. Also, a "rebooting PC" can be a sure sign of any number of viruses which create symptoms such as that.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252682 05/19/08 04:41 PM
Joined: Sep 2004 Posts: 4,196 Likes: 2 Chicago area, Illinois Coral Tech Member
Coral Tech Member Joined: Sep 2004 Posts: 4,196 Likes: 2 Chicago area, Illinois	Another possibility, in my experience, is that the Motherboard Capacitors are going bad. Look at the caps around the processor to see if they are "bubbling up". Coral Tech www.pantelonline.com

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252683 05/23/08 07:24 AM
Joined: May 2008 Posts: 4 Connecticut KevinG Member
KevinG Member Joined: May 2008 Posts: 4 Connecticut	Heat... open the box and use a small fan to cool MB ,CPU, memory and video. Also remove all cards clean contacts and reseat. a flaky powersuply will cause pc's to reboot.

Re: Silversam & his amazing rebooting PC #252684 06/07/08 01:57 PM
Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC Silversam OP Moderator-1A2, Cabling
OP Silversam Moderator-1A2, Cabling Joined: May 2007 Posts: 5,058 Likes: 5 NYC	So I'm back from vacation and the PC has been continuing to reboot. Following Dagwoodsystems excellent advice I've been checking the event monitor, but to no avail. The system reboots and there's no message. To date I had resolved two problems - a bum Cd/DVD drive that caused a reboot when accessed and a problem with Zone Alarm's True Vector software (that also caused reboots). At this point the POS PC has been rebooting with no indications as to why every 2 or 3 hours. I've tried everything else at this point so maybe it's bad memory. I downloaded Microsofts memory test and ran it for five straight hours (booting off a floppy)- no problems & no reboots. I opened the cover and ran the machine with a fan pointing at the system. It crashed. I cleaned the contacts on the cards and checked the condensors on the mother board. It crashed. By now I was really ticked off. I went down to the dreaded basement and grabbed an old PC and stripped out the power supply. Now people have been suggesting a defective power supply as a problem for a while, Kevin G most recently. I was a little hesitant for a couple of reasons. First, I'd changed the PS 2 or 3 years ago and installed a larger, "better" unit and second, when I'd booted to an "A" prompt with a floppy (two separate times), the system never crashed. But it was this or buy a new system so I swapped out the power supply. The existing unit was a large 430 Watt model and the one I had grabbed was a paltry 300 Watts, but what the heck, let's experiment. I only hooked up one of the 3 hard disks in the unit (I'd already disconnected one of the drives during previous troubleshooting). I figured the Mac is my new primary system, if I can get the PC to work it'll only be for the things I CAN'T get running on the Mac (Visio, Spider Solitaire [the easy version from MS], dBase, Easy Bridge etc.) so one disk should do it. I'll back up whatever I need to an external USB drive. I threw the PS in and lo and behold it's been running for over 30 hours without a blip. Maybe HD #2 is causing problems? Nah,it's the PS. 3 simultaneous, different problems in one machine. Go figure. My thanks to everyone who has helped me in this endeavor, especially Dagwoodsystems without whose help I never would have found the True Vector problem. (Now I've got to call ZA and ask them what they have to say for themselves!). What a great bunch of guys (and gals!) here. What a wealth of knowledge! This place is awesome! Thanks again, Sam "Where are we going and why are we in this hand basket?"

Page 1 of 3

Moderated by MooreTel

Hop To

Link Copied to Clipboard

Forum Statistics

Forums84

Topics94,299

Posts638,872

Members49,770

Most Online5,661
May 23rd, 2018