[sarsamis]

A few minutes ago my desktop just reset on its own. No Windows shut down screen or anything, just a blank screen followed by my startup crap. Now, this isn't the first time I've had this problem. The first time it happened after my PSU overheated one day, and I fixed it by throwing in a spare I had. It happened with the spare after I got a power outage and continued to happen until I switched my surge protector to another outlet that I noticed was unaffected by the outage. Since then I've installed the replacement PSU for my defective one that Corsair shipped me and have no problems until today, with the last instance occurring maybe a little over a month ago.

I had installed updates this morning and I remember them arbitrarily deciding to reset stuff when I'd idle on my other comp, but, as i said before, there was no proper windows shutdown. Just looked like I hit the rest button on the case or something.

Any ideas?

Sorry if these topics are becoming a nuisance, I just find you guys a lot more helpful than tech forum people.

[Panoptic]

Random resets with no bluescreens are usually something overheating. Try checking your CPU and GPU core temps. I use Core Temp and Rivatuner to do that, myself.

[Greng]

Hmm.

could be a PSI problem too, but usually it's overheating.

My graphics card fan no longer spins but this tough bitch still runs. A bit noisy though.
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Steam ~ Be Preying | Resident Evil.net ~ ElSpank

[sarsamis]

I try to keep watch on my temps. Core 0 likes to idle between 35 and 40 C, with the other 3 around mid to low 30's, and my video card around 45. I wasn't under any kind of load when it happened either.

Can RAM overheat and cause this? I know mine runs a bit hot, but I've never read about it causing problems.

[Panoptic]

RAM overheating would likely cause a bluescreen first, unless it was blisteringly hot (I.E. hot enough that you couldn't keep your finger on it for a second or so). Next thing to do would be to check your voltage levels.

[sarsamis]

got an app for that?

[Panoptic]

I use Motherboard Monitor, but I dunno if they've added your chipset to it yet. Could give it a try.

[sarsamis]

Eh, I guess it isn't since everything just says either 0 or ERROR. Unless I didn't configure it right.

[Kappuru]

Try Speedfan.
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[Martial Loh]

my pc kept restarting without error messages about a month ago. It would usually last about ten minutes before resetting.
Starting up Windows seemed longer than usual, everything was sluggish. I decided that it was a virus & formatted my drive.

So far, so good!

[sarsamis]

[Panoptic]

Can you check your voltages in your system's BIOS? The readings should be pretty accurate; of course you won't be able to test it under load, but if something's clearly wrong with the PSU it should give you a pretty good idea.

Edit - Uhh... Looking at your shot there... is your CPU throttled? A 6600 should have a clock rate of 2400MHz, not 1800.

[sarsamis]

It lowers the multiplier to 6 instead of 9 when I'm not doing anything. If I were to open a program or two it would go to 2700. I think it's called speedstepping, and most newer processors have some form of it.

I'll boot into BIOS next time I reset my computer for w/e reason and check out the voltages.

[Panoptic]

So, yes, then?

The voltage looks a bit high for that clock speed. Is it set to auto-adjust or did you adjust that manually? I never enable the auto-throttling; doesn't really save any energy or make the CPU's run much cooler in my experience.

Either way, if it's not a heat or voltage issue, I'd say reload it.

[sarsamis]

[Schwere Viper]

Mine was giving me black resets and graphical corruption a while back, so I just opened it up, disassembled the heat sinks on the CPU and graphics card, got rid of all the dust, put everything back together and bam! Works fine. Heat sinks were absolutely CLOGGED with dust, so yeah, lesson learned.
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HeavyViper@Twitter ~~~ HeavyViper@Soundcloud
Blog: Machines That Sing

[sarsamis]

On Sunday my mom had reconfigured the computer setup in the room across from mine, including the power stuff for my computer, which is in my room, since it's plugged in there via an extension cable and surge protector (I have no grounded outlets in my room). She didn't like the fact that these cords ran straight across the floor, so she added a second surge protector to the mix to add the length needed to have it go along the walls behind some shelves and stuff.

About 13-hours ago I told her I was getting random resets (which was related to power issues the last two times) and redid that setup as it was before. Hasn't reset since, though, I did get an ATI VPU monitor reset thing, but for all I know that was a freak occurrence brought forth by immature drivers on an immature video card. It happened within 10-minutes of the computer being on and never again over the last 13-hours, which didn't match the reset patterns.

So, um, grounded outlet -> surge protector -> extension cable -> surge protector -> computer = power fluctuations, electrical resistance, or something

and

grounded outlet -> extension cable -> surge protector -> computer doesn't?

Does that make sense?

Or could it possibly be that IDCC, which I uninstalled prior to the last reset, was having a conflict with VPU, causing the computer to just reset whenever VPU initiated? I'm leaning against that though since this started after mom messed with the power cables, and IDCC's been on my computer just as long as all my ATI drivers and such.

[sarsamis]

Fuck, never mind, it reset while I was at school.

-edit-

Well, ATI still had a lot of errors in the event log, so I reinstalled the old drivers that came with the card.

I really don't want to have to reformat since I've only had this computer for 4-months, but if you guys think I have to...

[Toptube]

It is most certainly a problem with your CPU.

Its probably overheating. Your thermal grease may be dried out, or the heatsinks might be clogged with shit, or both. Either way, remove the heatsink/fan and clean off both the processor and the bottom of the heatsink with rubbing alchohol. Put some new thermal paste on (about the size of a small grain of rice in the center). Clean dust and hairs out of the fan and heatsink fins, too.

You should be good with no resets after this. It could be a sign though that your CPU is about to go belly up, regardless.

[Panoptic]

What video card do you have? Try throttling up the fan a little bit. I run the fan on my 4870 at 33% all the time. It's a little bit louder, but it idles at 50C instead of 75, and climbs to maybe 60 in-game. Hell, what's sad is at the stock fan speed, I was getting artifacting in games.

[sarsamis]

[sarsamis]

Actually, I ended up inspecting it anyways. There was literally no dust in my cpu heatsink, and the thermal grease was still moist. I wiped away the old stuff and put the other in because the other seems to be of a higher quality anyways though. I saw some dust between the heatsink and silicon on my GPU, but it was very minuscule. I used an electric air pump and blew most of it out. To my surprise, there was quite a bit of dust between the vents on the plastic case front and the aluminum inner front section. I wiped it all away and am considering adding a filter of some sort.

I have yet to turn it on since doing this stuff.

[sarsamis]

Just started it up now.

Um, shit, new thermal greese needs to set in a bit first, right? My CPU was in the 80's right after startup and started going down bit by bit. It's around the 50's now.

[Panoptic]

By reloading I mean formatting and re-installing Windows, yes.

If it's not a temperature or voltage thing it's going to be hard chasing the demons out of this thing. But... what kind of heatsink compound are you using? 80C is dangerously high and 50C actually seems a bit high as well for idle... What kind of temps do you see at 100% load? Thermal compound does need to warm up for a while before it performs optimally, but it shouldn't hit 80C...

I'm sitting at about 46-48C idle overclocked to ~3.5GHz, but I've also got a huge heatsink.

[sarsamis]

I had applied it to both the heatsink and CPU before, which was way too much. I realized this right after making that post, but it took me a long time to get the computer together again because holy fucking shit it's hard to get those damn plastic pins in correctly. Something must've happened to them after that last removal because they gave me hell. It said 37C when I booted up again just now.

Using Arctic Silver 5 with an ACpro7

2 of my cores are in the 20's now, better than it had ever been before.

[Panoptic]

Yeah, the HS mount design is kind of a pain in the ass. Just remember, if the pins aren't snapping when you push down on them, chances are you have to turn the peg.

You only need an extremely thin layer for AS5 to work properly - nothing should squeeze out when you put the HS down. Anyway, we'll see how things go I guess.

[sarsamis]

Still very reluctant too, but I guess I'll try reformatitng if it starts getting bad again.

but if I gave up and decided to take it to a professional, are there any particularly good places?

[Toptube]

In re-reading your original post, you may have damaged some of the parts of your mobo that regular power after all of that PSU overheating, power outage, mega daisy chaining. It makes sense that it would alleviate a bit each time you improved the cleanliness of the your power.

[sarsamis]

That makes sense. Think Intel would replace it? I still have the receipt, packaging, etc.

[Toptube]

[sarsamis]

I'm cool with lying. Actually, I was thinking of doing something worse. From an old receipt I was just looking at I noticed that FRY's doesn't have serial numbers on their motherboard receipts. Well, at least that's true for this receipt of my dad's motherboard. If it's the case for the dx38bt as well then I might as well buy a new one from them, then return the one I have now for a refund a week later or something. That way I wouldn't have to ship things and be without my computer for a week or two.

[shnozlak]

[Panoptic]

[sarsamis]

So I got a replacement motherboard (same model and everything) and put it all together and things were going good except for some annoying prompts to install my dvd drive and IDE ports (eventhough the disc drive is working and everything and I don't have any IDE devices in use.) I figured "well, it can't hurt" and decided to reinstall some stuff from the board's driver disc. Now my motherboard refuses to acknowledge any of my SATA devices. Won't boot.

[Toptube]

well that was a lot at once, but you should never use the drivers that come with computer hardware unless you absolutely have to.

boot to safemode with networking and download the newest drivers for your mobo's chipset from nvdia, ati, or intel (whoever's chipset is in your board). Uninstall your current mobo drivers and install the new ones.

then, pray.

[sarsamis]

[sarsamis]

well I just turned it on for the hell of it and it booted up fine. bizarre since I restarted it 3 times last night to no avail

now I just need to get it to stop pestering me about installing things that shouldn't need installation.

and I wouldn't mind overclocking it again especially now since I got a new case and my cpu idles in the 20's, but when I tried IDCC last night my computer just reset twice and didn't change anything, and I'm afraid to do a BIOS update (which I think I did before overclcoking last time) after seeing what a driver installation caused it to do :/

[sarsamis]

I left the computer on to torrent something and went out for about 6 hours. when I came home the monitor wasn't responding but the HDD and ethernet LEDs were flashing like it was still torrenting. I reset and now it refuses to boot again. CCG said she never saw me log off of aim. This is just maddening now.

[sarsamis]

(I'm just going to start posting in succession. Mods feel free to axe this)

so it will boot into windows if I turn off the psu before rebooting it. I don't understand that. And oh god, why was there no image when I got home?

[sarsamis]

Hell will freeze over, Benoit Ren will say something agreeable, and Joe will watch Lucky Star before my computer ever functions for more than a month or two as a normal computer should. I guess I'll try a BIOS update afterall.

[sarsamis]

I updated to a version of the bios made on 10/09/08. It didn't do shit. Same lack of boot only remedied by turning off the power for a bit then resetting.