Help! Computer Randomly Restarts

[dilbert04]

Thank you for taking your time to read this. I have a Micron PC, PIII 800, onbord sound, video, 20 gb hd running Win ME (Yuck!). ive had it almost a year. The problem is that anywheres from 1 minute when i boot up to 3 hours, 1 of 2 things happen: it reboots, or the screen stops receiving a signal and the computer just locks up (it looks like its on standby, except the lights are green). I then have to manually restart it. The fans are all working, i have tried a new hd w/win 95, new power supply, turned off all power saving functions.... everything!! but to no avail--can anybody help me???
Thanks -Dilbert04

[mjc]

Well, you have tried a new power supply, did you up the wattage on it?

Have you tried swapping/reducing to one stick/replacing the RAM?

Heat is also a factor in random reboots...does you BIOS have any temperature monitoring capabilities? If so what kind of temps are you seeing?

You can try openning the case and blowing a small household fan into it to see if that reduces or eliminates the problem.

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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.

[dilbert04]

mjc-i have not upped the wattege, ill try that-Why would that matter??
-the ram is 128 mb stick--it will only work in DIMM 1-
-No bios temp measuring--i have tried the fan thing--nothing-
But, i really dont think it has anything to do with heat, because, like i also said, it looks like it goes into standby and stops responding, just as many times as it restarts--i am systematicaly checking parts--i am thinking that it might be the motherboard, but i would be really suprised if it was, because I boutgt this comp. brand new from Micron, a little over a year ago--
Thanks--any other suggestions???
dilbert04

[mjc]

What is the wattage of the power supply currently in the machine?

Basically the three common cause of reboots are heat, power and RAM (there can be others but these cover the majority...some of the others can be flaky add-in cards, like video or sound, yours are onboard, some other device that has intermittant power problems, etc).


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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.

[dilbert04]

A new development:
I installed another 6 GB hd that i had laying around w/win 98 2nd edition on it--it is working fine!!! now, i hooked up the bad hd as a slave, backed up critical files, and i am in the process of restoring the disk to its orignal state--so after all this, it looks like it is the hd-what i dont know is if the hd itself is bad, or just the OS, thats what im checking--thank you very much for all your help-and time--
--dilbert04 http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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[mjc]

Well, Since you have it open and can see the drive, grab the diagnostics from the drive manufacturer's website....just finished one last night (a regular here was having major BSOD problems) we ran the diagnostics and it looks like he is going to RMA his drive, the diagnostics came with the drive had major errors (like it failed the SMART); so yes a hard drive with problems can cause your symptoms, but so can a corrupt OS.

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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.

[dilbert04]

its been a while--i havent had access to the net--update, when trying to restore disk to orignal state of windows ME, it does the same thing-but, when i installed win 98, it works. I just found out that i have 10 days left on my warrenty, so i am going to do that--i think its actually something wrong with the motherboard...later--
Dilbert04-- http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

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[mjc]

If it runs fine in 98 but in ME it could be a config problem in ME. Have you tried disabling all power management in ME?



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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.

[dilbert04]

I have disabled every power thing in ME, in fact, i just reformatted and tryed to install ME-Halfway through the process, it does the same thing-then i tried 98-same thing--now i definetly think its the board, i called Micron's tech support, they are sending out a new board, should be here today, and one of their techs, will install it--all for free--so we shall see if this works--ill keep you posted, thanks again, for your time--
dilbert04-- http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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