PC rebooting
Author
Discussion

meeja

Original Poster:

8,290 posts

266 months

Tuesday 10th February 2004
quotequote all
OK.... I have a W2000 PC, all the latest service packs, up to date AV, all patches for blaster etc etc

This evening it has rebooted itself three times in 45 minutes, for absolutely no reason at all.

I haven't had the case open recently, or fitted any new hardware (or software for that matter)

Run spybot, and a complete virus scan.... nothing found.

Any ideas?!

JonRB

78,517 posts

290 months

Tuesday 10th February 2004
quotequote all
I had this on a Win2K machine a while back. In the end it was rebooting during bootup before the OS even got a lookin, at which point the mobo was hoiked out and binned, and a matched mobo / CPU / RAM combo from Novatech dropped in instead.

No problems since, and a faster computer too. Result.

john_p

7,073 posts

268 months

Wednesday 11th February 2004
quotequote all
Is your CPU fan still working?

We had a W98 machine do this at the office, just start rebooting for no reason, so I reinstalled Windows on it, and it still did it - so checked inside the case and Doh! no CPU fan.

brumster

118 posts

261 months

Wednesday 11th February 2004
quotequote all
Yeah, agreed, it *could* just be a dodgy hardware issue - the hard disk could be on the way out, the CPU/memory not 'seated' properly, etc.

You could open it up, give everything a good dusting, check everything's ok (maybe refit the basics just to be on the safe side) and see how it goes from there.

You might be able to download a hard drive check utility if it's a Maxtor/IBM/Hitachi drive or any other mainstream device, and give it an overnight check.

Plotloss

67,280 posts

288 months

Wednesday 11th February 2004
quotequote all
Heat
HW Fault
Mem
SW Config


In that order.

Podie

46,646 posts

293 months

Wednesday 11th February 2004
quotequote all
RPC error?

Run a stinger to check.

rpguk

4,501 posts

302 months

Wednesday 11th February 2004
quotequote all
www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?f=95&h=&t=78693

This thread might be of help as its about the same thing.

As I said on that one, when it happened to me it was because of a knackered network card, although it does seem to be a problem that can stem from a lot of different issues.

It is very irrating though.

borris-bear

818 posts

263 months

Wednesday 11th February 2004
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Also maybe swap out the power supply if you can find a spare. I had similar problems which turned out to be the PSU.

andyf007

863 posts

276 months

Thursday 12th February 2004
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Sounds like it is set to automatically reboot on a stop error. You could switch that function off and take a look at the good old BSOD. Usually the last file listed in the BSOD relates to the cause of the stop error. Find what app or device uses that file and you may be some way to sorting it.

I know you said that the AV was up to date, but does that include the engine? I've seen similar occur because the engine was not kept up to date and it then starts to perform illegal scan operations on system files, causing a BSOD.

Andy

puggit

49,230 posts

266 months

Thursday 12th February 2004
quotequote all
Overheating graphics card?

This month's PC Forum magazine has a helpful flowchart for troubleshooting unexpected reboots

meeja

Original Poster:

8,290 posts

266 months

Friday 13th February 2004
quotequote all
Sorry..... been away for a couple of days, first chance to read your replies....

All hardware is pretty new (rebuilt it last October)

CPU fan is fine, ambient temp inside the case is not particularly warm.

All cards seated correctly

Memory: Have swapped entire memory out for some older stuff I had knocking around..... still had problem.

It has only rebooted once this morning, just as after I had logged on to W2K

Briefly saw the dialogue box "Mcshield has caused....."

I *think* this is something to do with my AV software (McAfee Viruscan Enterprise)

Any further ideas?!

andyf007

863 posts

276 months

Friday 13th February 2004
quotequote all
Pretty much as I suspected. If you can get it to stay up long enough, check what virus engine it's using. You can keep your DATs up to date, but the later DATs rely on newer scanning engines to funtion correctly. For Mcafee the latest engine is 4.3.20, if the icon is there near the clock, right click it and select the "about virusscan" or whatever and that will display your current status, if it's earlier than 4.1.60 then it will crash.

The easiest way to update the engine is to download and run the SuperDat (engine and DAT) file from here www.nai.com/us/downloads/updates/.

Your best bet would be to disable the scanner, again by right clicking the icon, as soon as you get started, this should stop it crashing while you update.

Andy

meeja

Original Poster:

8,290 posts

266 months

Friday 13th February 2004
quotequote all
It is running scan engine 4.3.20

And virus definitions created on 11th Feb 2004

Edited to add:

Apart from the one reboot this morning, I haven't (fingers crossed) had any other problems today.....

>> Edited by meeja on Friday 13th February 11:35

andyf007

863 posts

276 months

Friday 13th February 2004
quotequote all
How very odd, I take it W2K is at SP4? Have you altered the settings at all in the anti-virus console? Sometimes enabling the heuristics can cause problems, as can enabling the download scan or setting it to scan all files without setting any exclusions (it shouldn't scan its own directory nor the page file). It may also be worth simply reinstalling the AV software.

What software version is yours? I have version 7.0 here now, which is considerably better than 4.5

Andy

meeja

Original Poster:

8,290 posts

266 months

Friday 13th February 2004
quotequote all
Yep, W2K SP4.... patched up to the eyeballs!

Viruscan V7.0.0

I may do an AV reinstall over the weekend.... should I uninstall first, or just reinstall over the top?