What (hardware/software) makes a computer randomly reboot?

C

cackle

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 7, 2002
Messages
270
Hello. I built an SFF computer for my friend recently (on the latest nForce2 model) and he's been having trouble that I can't seem to diagnose. The problem is that his computer at (seemingly) random times, will reboot without a BSOD. It will just be like "Da-da-da, I'm listening to music and browsing the web..." and then it reboots. Sometimes it will happen right after the computer has restarted. It will be like, "Da-da-da, I wonder why it rebooted, oh well at least I'm back in Windows..." and then it reboots. Note that my computer (which I built) is also doing this on occassion.

Usually the reboots will come all at or near the same time. For example, two days ago my computer reboot at least 10 times during the day. It hadn't done so for months before that and it hasn't rebooted once since.

So basically my question is: What could be causing this from both a hardware or software POV? I'm looking for more of a bulleted list here -- not necessarily specifics until I've looked at everything that it COULD be. It may come down to specifics but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Thanks.
 
do you have 'restart on bluescreen' turned off?
my computer -> properties -> advanced -> startup and recovery (settings) -> "automatically restart" checkbox..
 
They're both WinXP, on different discs. I turned "Auto Restart" off on mine just now and I'll tell my friend to do the same. We'll see if that helps narrow down the problem any.
 
It's not gonna narrow it down, but it won't reboot, it'll give you an Error message and you can write it down and figure out the problem...
 
I had this problem last summer. Turned out to be a bad memory module. (Gotta love Crucial's warranties.) Download memtest and check your ram.
 
Some time back, I did a thread on stability testing. While it doesn't answer your question directly, you may get some useful info out of it.

Here it is.

Good Luck - B.B.S.
 
Random reboots are usually a sign that

A. Your comp is overheating.

B. Your computer is not getting enough voltage to the cpu/memory.

The first thing I would do is monitor the temps, if they seem ridiculously high, time to start thinking ways of cooling your little case down.

The second thing I would definitely do is maybe bump your memory voltage up .1 , a computer being unstable is often because the cpu or memory is not getting enough voltage. More then likely, especially if you are using good, fast timing memory, you need a drop more voltage to the memory.
 
Awesome thread BBS. I'll run those tests and see what happens. I have a feeling it is the RAM, cause (at least for my comp) I've switched the PSU and it still occurs.
 
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