I'm running a 900 mhz Athlon Thunderbird with 384 mbs RAM and a geforce II GTS. I recently opened up my case to look at something inside, I didn't touch anything but I did wipe dust off a few parts, and now my PC randomly reboots itself. I've heard that it could be due to a collection of dust, that it could be the power source, the ram, overheating or any other number or problems. I'm running win98. I've tried using both of my sticks of ram at individual times but it doesn't help me. Does anyone have any advice for me? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Could be a virus, Or the other things you listed.
If its hardware it s usually the powersupply, see if you can replacce it.
Anohter thing is did you load some software recently on your computer,,if so uninstall it and see if that helps

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Sledgehammer will save the day!

Hey,

A couple of things you could try is to get yourself a can of compressed air and blow out the inside of the case really well. You can get that at almost any department and/or computer store.

Secondly, I would take a close look at those parts that you "wiped" the dust off of, and make sure they are securely attached/connected. You may have moved something a smidgen and that's causing the reboots.

Post back with your progress.

Big Blue 66


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Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
- Pamela Vault Starr

I've experienced the same thing during boot up for about a year with my Slot A 900 mhz Athalon. If you are getting random re-boots there is a good chance you have a cpu fan problem. I have an older fan on mine and have to watch the RPM's carefully [there are program's out there that will monitor the fan speed for you]......if the RPM's fall below 2500......it will heat up. The greatest downside to an Athalon processor is that it doesn't have an auto shutdown [like Pentium does] built into the chip to prevent overheating........so, if it overheats -- it's dead!!

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Will XP save Me ?

Well I've taken a close look at the inside of my pc several times now and I'm not finding anything thats out of place or not connected or locked in. My cpu fan is running at over 5400 RPM's a second. I've tried running it with just one stick of ram in a time and I've also moved them from slot to slot. I guess I'll go get a can of compressed air and try cleaning it out really well. If that doesn't work I'm going to format it but I'm afraid that if I format it the damn thing will restart when I try to install win98 again. If I do have to get a new power source how powerful should it be? I'm also thinking that it might be the motherboard, although I'm really hoping thats not what it is. Oh and Norton is also telling me that I have a memory error if that helps. Thanks a lot guys I appreciate the help and if you have any other suggestions PLEASE post em. I'm desperate!

Hey,

Before resorting to a reinstall, see if you can borrow some known good memory. You may have inadvertently messed up the RAM by ESD, when you were in the case before. Just a thought.

This happened to me with a motherboard I used to have. Come to find out, there were two bad DIMM slots, out of three, so I was only able to run it with one stick. Norton was also telling me that I had memory errors.

Good luck.

Big Blue 66


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Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
- Pamela Vault Starr

Most likely this is a hardware problem so reformatting will probably just waste your time. After running for a while reboot and go into your bios and check your processor temp.

What memory error message are you getting? Type that message into a search engine and see what you come up with.

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"It's all one song," Neil Young

Well I've cleaned everything out, formatted (even though I knew it wouldn't fix the problem), and changed all my ram around. Someone told me that having Wake on LAN enabled can cause this random rebooting problem also. Has anyone else heard this? The really weird thing about this rebooting is how random it actually is...it could reboot while the windows 98 screen is loading or it could go 2 hours without rebooting. That causes me to think that the problem isn't with the ram but most likely power source. I'm gonna break down and buy a new one later this week if this WOL doesn't solve the problem. Thanks to everyone who has helped me out the past few days! I'll keep you posted on whats going on.

If it is as random as you say then I would be inclined to lean towards the PSU..if you don't have NIC in the machine then WOL shouldn't matter (but what should and shouldn't matter never seem to follow reality...). Also if you did not follow grounding precautions when you wher inside the machine you could have zapped any number of components...if the power supply replacement doesn't help then you will need to swap out components one by one.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

I'm in agreement on this one, power supply is most likely, and ESD could also be part of it. The key word is RANDOM...that almost always means power supply or heat, and you've pretty much ruled out heat. Bad memory will frequently have problems while booting and you'll get a beep code or error message, but it can also occasionally be random, especially if ESD is the culprit. ESD can often damage memory but not make it totally unusable, meaning it will work but will be flaky.

See if you can find some known good memory to try first, and handle it carefully, then consider power supply.

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Support the right to keep and arm bears.
Note: Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.dreamwater.com/paleopete/computer.htm) has been moved, please update your bookmarks.

Well I found the problem. I decided to go ahead and remove every piece of hardware at a time and make sure that the problem was my power source before I bought one. The first thing I took out was my network card and that solved the problem! I just put it back in my pc only in a different pci slot to see if its the card or the slot thats bad. Either way I've found the problem and I can work around it. Thanks to everyone who's helped me out in the past week!

Hey, I'm so glad I found this track... I've been having the same problem lately. I've tried nearly everything. Even got a spare case off a friend to test on the power supply theory. Thought the thing was overheating so I waited until the restart and put my finger on the heat sink... left it there about 15 seconds. I've been at my wits end.

I've got a spare NIC card laying around, so I'm definately going to try that out!

I'd also like to note, that although the re-boots were completely random, I noticed that a high percentage of them occurred while I was surfing...

-Byrus

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If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer.

[This message has been edited by Byrus (edited 12-26-2001).]