Computer restarting itself - WTF
 

for the past week my computer takes it upon itself to restart out of the blue. No warning, screen just goes to black and then starts booting itself up again. When I get back to Windows it says the system has recovered from a serious error. I thought it was overheating, but I installed a motherboard temp monitor and the temps are perfectly fine. I also got another error that some files necessary for Windows XP to function correctly had changed and to insert my Windows disk to reinstall them. I did, but it wouldn't work because I have since updated my XP to service pack 2 (Microsoft, fuck you).

I would really like to just reinstall Windows at this point, but can I even do that since my disk is SP1 and ive already installed SP2 on it?

Almost always a heat related problem in the computer... is it time to open it up and blow out all the little dust bunnies? Make sure the fans are running, esp the CPU fan!!! Somethings getting to hot.

just format!

It could be a power supply problem too. I had a power supply crap out on me one time and it caused my pc to randomly restart. I never got the windows error message though. That error kind of makes me suspect Windows is to blame.

Do you have a system restore point from just before the error began? If so, just restore. I can't tell you how many times restore has saved my ass.

maybe the pc is getting to hot and will restart. i had this problem with my pc some time ago.

yes like matt said im pretty sure it is a heat problem

got the same issue last week.
opened the case and cleaned the whole dust from the computer.

damn what a shitload of dust was in there :1orglaugh

running like a charm again

yea it probably a hit problem

sound like a hit and run to me


anyway, could be just about anything

start with the CPU fan, and take it from there

if you're not sure if its software or hardware, log into safe mode, if it restarts while you're in safe mode 99% it is a hardware problem

Automatic Updates are a potential issue as well....

You ever see "your computer was recently updated" in the system tray?

if thats not it, you prolly have a power supply or heat issue on the cpu

i know i know!!!!

right click on "my computer"

hit pproperties

click on advanced

look under startup and recovery

under system failure uncheck "automatic restart"

Sometimes it's a power supply that is to small for your computer..

do you have live updates from MS on ? sometimes they reboot your pc after an update.

Could the the Blaster Worm or another virus.

what an intellengent comp
and i always have mistakes with forums. Start to write, then comp is closing the forum and i have to open it again and search for the thread. Sick of it today

My laptop is in the corner collecting dust because of this too.

Usually it's the CPU over heating or a faulty power supply

by default windows xp is set to automatically restart on any system error

so, by unchecking that automatic restart box it will cure your restart issue, but you really need to see what is causing the error

so yuo need to reinstall your Win

Thanks for all the suggestions guys...the "serious error" message when Windows starts back up makes me think it probably is a software issue more than a heat/power supply issue. I turned off the automatic restart and hopefully the blue screen of death gives me a useful error code. I'm going to Office Depot to grab a big external and back everything up just in case this monkey decides to die on me though.

dont curse Windows because you downloaded a trojan off some beastiality website.

and if its not that, check the caps on your motherboard.

I had a problem like this a month ago with the exact same symptoms. Eventually it got the point where it would just reboot as soon as it loaded up to windows.

After buying a new power supply (didn't help) I took it to a retailer who ran a new anti-virus program, then reformatted my drive & reinstalled windows... it turned out to be a faulty RAM chip.

yup.. same thing happened to me

It was a tranny site you dumbass.

^^^ looks like the problems found... but id first run Super ant spyware yourself, plus run Clear prog to clean out all temp folders, including the invisible ones that other programs leave alone... these two really help, totally clean and speed up your pc.

i didn't see the part about the blue screen...if you are getting that then you have a hardware issue for sure

be careful with that, I had the blue screen a few months back and ignored it and kept restarting my machine over and over...eventually my hard drive died and I lost everything on it. It turns out my ide controller was going bad and the blue screen was XP's way of telling me that

One of the other things it could be is something else plugged in to the same line as your computer. If you have a laser printer or a coffee machine etc.. these devices can draw enough to power to bring the line voltage down enough to cause a reboot. You didn't mention if you had a battery backup, which would let you know if you had an issue like this.

I had the same issues before but pluging everything important into a UPS solved it. Now, I hear a little beep once or twice a day from the ups... It's better than the reboot that would have happened.

Could very well be ... I just replaced one for a 600 Watts ( instead of 350 ) and everything is running fine now.

I had added four DVD recorders plus a PCI IDE controller card .... Would just shut down if I tried to use one of the dvd's.

I had the excact same problem. I have a 1,6ghrz prosessor, but I had to UNDERCLOCK it to 1,4ghrtz to make it work!

Ok THIS is prolly the weirdest answer youll get : do you keep your cellphone on it?

Cause I found it : my dell resets when I do that... SO fucking weird. The powersupply reacts on the radiation from my cell phone. If I put it on top and call my cell my pc resets.

Nice uh :/

Had that annoying to find problem on the old faithful in the corner of the office. Once the problem was found it was an easy fix and old faithful is smoking away in the corner again.

Could be faulty power or reset switch

If the thing is just humming along fine and then restarts, and you aren't doing anything that could pull the power supply down (starting up DVD drive, accessing hard drive that's on auto-power-off) just before it reboots, the problem is almost always bad RAM.

Sometimes the RAM will fail due to heat (dust inside the case will trap heat, and the area near the RAM tends to trap a lot of dust)

If you're not afraid to open the case and play with the insides, I'd get a paintbrush (new and clean, of course) and dust out the interior. Make sure you unplug the power cord... the motherboard still has power when the computer is off.

If it still restarts randomly after you do that, I'd try swapping the RAM out. I'd vote for RAM over the power supply, because usually if the power supply is dying, you'll see other flaky behavior (won't boot at all sometimes, or boots and all hard drives won't start up) rather than the random reboot problem you're seeing.

Hope that helps.

If your processor is socket LGA 775 remove the processor from the scket and clean up the bottom side of the processor with ethanol, then put new heatsink silicone on it.
If your processor is some other socket you can only reinsert it into the socket and renew the heatsink silicone.
Look at the motherboard for faulty capacitors around the processor. Check the RAM modules and the video card.
This was my job in my previous life :-)

hmm, I have a tendency to keep my cellphone on my external HD, maybe I should find a better place for it...

i had the same problem before, all i had to do was format and it went away

Wow, thanks for all the responses everyone. After turning the auto restart off I did indeed get the blue screen this afternoon. A bunch of mumbo jumbo about memory locations, wrote it all down and have my nerd PC doctor coming to check it out. My gut is saying its something like the RAM going bad. I'll update when I know more, I know lots of you are DYING to know ;)

i just end up with similar problem on my laptop

when i restart my pc and it books,goes to welcome screen of windows and restarts automatically and again and again. If I go to to safe mode first and then load window problem goes away.

any idea?

definately nearly always a heat problem whereby CPU temp is too high, open up the case and used compressed air to clean it when its turned off...possibly you may need to reformat your NTSC partition again and reinstall XP if your missing registry files

its probobly on powersupply,
like everyone said its on heat problem
change ur xp to service pack 2
cleanup ur pc using systemmechanic
sometimes its on the graphic card
upgrade to direct x9.0c

format ur pc

Now that is a problem I never heard of before

I think I had that same problem too, prolly the best answer to that is just to reformat it. I'm not sure about this but a friend of mine doesn't suggest SP2.

Do a safe boot F8 and see if the prob happens in safe mode. If so It is most likely a hardware problem. If not then it may be software or a virus.

Ditto, my cpu was on fire ... and it even happened within minutes of starting up Windows. Upgrades are the answer, obviously.

does this happen while you surf porn? is your computer catholic?

heat is the usual culprit. And power failure issues. I've not seen RAM go bad, but I've heard it can eventually happen.

Ok, update. I researched the error codes, this is what it spit out:

BCCode : 1000008e BCP1 : C0000005 BCP2 : BF801932
BCP3 : AF4487C4 BCP4 : 00000000 OSVer : 5_1_2600 SP : 2_0
Product : 256_1

This is what the error corresponds to:
0x0000008E: KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

And this is the file where the problem is happening:
Win32k.sys

A quick google search let me know I was not the only one with this problem. The bad part is it could be a ton of different things, I've heard everything from lack of disc space to faulty RAM, and also problems with drivers. I think I still need my nerd to come out and maybe try to find the problem from the rest of the error dump.