PC restarts itself

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My PC would restart itself for no reason recently. It happens probably once every 3 to 4 days. What will cause this problem? Where should I start to find the bug/bugs?

System: Microstar MS-6368 board, Intel 1.0 GHz Celeron, Windows XP Home SP1

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Are you otherwise running 24/7?
Does it restart when you are using it, or when there is inactivity for a while?
Do you have any power-down settings selected?
Do you have a network card and/or modem fitted?
Have you got any debugging setup ?(Right_click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Startup and Recovery > )

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Q: Are you otherwise running 24/7?
A: It is runing from 7:00am to 10:00pm.

Q: Does it restart when you are using it, or when there is inactivity for a while?
A: It restarted when I was using it.

Q: Do you have any power-down settings selected?
A: Where to find this setting?

Q: Do you have a network card and/or modem fitted?
A: The NIC is a built-in with mother board. I do have a PCI modem installed.

Q: Have you got any debugging setup ?(Right_click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Startup and Recovery > )
A: Yes. The Write Debugging Information is “Small memory dump (64KB)”. The Small Dump Directory is “%SystemRoot%Minidump”.

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In addition to Leif’s suggestions, I’m going to hazard two guesses here: one, it’s a blue screen and XP is automatically rebooting when it dumps. Two, I bet it’s a driver issue of some kind, but what that is I can’t say – yet.

Look at the recovery options and make sure “Automatically reboot” is not checked. You need to see what the error message is when the blue screen occurs. It might not be a bad idea to list all of the hardware in your machine, from installed memory on up to the type of video card that it has inside. If it’s a driver issue this will become important information to have.

And lastly….have you recently applied any software updates?

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There is no blue screen before the restart. It seems that the PC just lose power and reboot itself when I was using the computer.

I had a virus attack on the BIOS several weeks ago. I flashed and installed the newest version of BIOS.

F.Y.I.: I do have a 250 VA UPS for the computer to prevent the power failure.

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It seems that the PC just lose power and reboot itself when I was using the computer.

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[/indent]Understood – and that’s exactly what will happen if ‘Automatically reboot’ is checked in the advanced system properties (see screen shot). Did you make sure that the checkbox was cleared?

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‘Automatically reboot’ was checked. I followed your instruction to uncheck it. What will happen with this option unchecked when system fails?

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Quite possibly one of those wonderful BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).

But it should give you some information on what is causing it.

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Dennis,
I think Mark is onto the most likely source of your problem. However, there are a few things you mention that might be clarified.

!) When you say, “it loses power” do you mean a blackout of the LEDS on your box, or just a momentary glitch as if you hit the reset button?
2) When you reflashed the BIOS, did you go into it and double check settings in all screens? For example, my newest BIOS will allow overclocking of the CPU and memory, speed & voltage. Wrong settings here will give strange intermittant troubles.
3) Also, have you checked internal temperatures and fan operations on your MB?

Bob

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Q: When you say, “it loses power” do you mean a blackout of the LEDS on your box, or just a momentary glitch as if you hit the reset button?
A: Since everything happened so fast, I could not remember what was exactly happening. I would say it was just like a momentary glitch as if someone had hit the reset button.

Q: When you reflashed the BIOS, did you go into it and double check settings in all screens? For example, my newest BIOS will allow overclocking of the CPU and memory, speed & voltage. Wrong settings here will give strange intermittant troubles.
A: I did not check any settings. I just used the default and did not do overclocking.

Q: Also, have you checked internal temperatures and fan operations on your MB?
A: Where can I check the internal tempt and fan operation?

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Unless you have a seperate utility installed, the temperature, etc. should be displayed in the BIOS.

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The BIOS shows CPU temperature at 32C/89F and system temperature at 27C/80F after 30 minutes.

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As Bryan noted, you should be seeing the Blue Screen of Death (what an endearing term). If and when that occurs, make note of the first line of the error, particularly the text string (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL et al) and the first few hexadecimal numbers (08000000xC0 or similar). Also look to see if Windows displays the name of a driver or faulting component.

In the meantime, while you’re waiting for the implosion, you can check the Windows Event Viewer for clues. Click on Start – Run and enter EVENTVWR.MSC (doesn’t matter if it’s lowercase or upper). Check the application and system logs, and note/double click on any red flags that you see. These events will give you a numeric code that you can likely find at EventID.net. That should help narrow things down. If you don’t understand what you’re seeing, write it down, and post back here – the Lounge will certainly pounce on it like a hungry lion with a steak.

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To know the error message, I need to wait for the Blue Screen of Death showing up next time.

I checked the EVENTVWR.MSC, there was a Save Dump log on Jan. 2, 2003, the date last automatic restart happened. I did a search at EventID.com with no result. The following is the error message:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x10000050 (0xff9863ec, 0x00000001, 0xbf8917dc, 0x00000000). A dump was saved in: C:WINDOWSMinidumpMini010203-01.dmp.

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What anti-virus software do you have installed? Is there any A/V protection active in the BIOS?

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I don’t have any anti-virus application installed.

The Anti-Virus Protection feature is enable in the AWARD BIOS setup.

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I seriously recommend that you get some A/V protection ASAP. There are many to choose from, but I will suggest AVG Free Edition 6 from http://www.grisoft.com[/url%5D just because it is free and it works.

If you are going to pay money for something a bit more polished, I recommend Norton A/V for effectiveness and ease of use. If you do go this route, remember to disable the Award BIOS A/V, as the two of them do not work together.

What did you do to remove the virus that attacked your BIOS? What virus was it?

Your temperatures look good, so unless something is happening to raise them from time to time, it doesn’t look like that’s the problem. If the PC sounds quieter just before it crashes, though, that would indicate an intermittent problem with a cooling fan.

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Q: What did you do to remove the virus that attacked your BIOS? What virus was it?
A: Long story! It was an unknown virus that was not detected by either Norton or Mcafee virus scan. The virus kept trying to open my Outlook 2002. In other words, if I closed Outlook 2002 application, virus would reopen it again. For preventing virus attack to ruin all my contacts, I do not have contact stored in Outlook 2002. (Probably it was the reason why virus kept trying to open my Outlook 2002). Since either Norton or Mcafee could not detect this virus, I pulled out a brand-new hard drive and installed the WinXP from scratch. After the installation, I found the Outlook Express tried to open itself again and again and again…. Since my BIOS was not enabled with virus-protected then, my friend and I concluded that there must be something happened to the BIOS. So I flashed the BIOS and installed the newest version of it. After that everything went fine, I hope.

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Norton and McAfee rarely fail to detect a virus, unless you are one of the unlucky first wave to be infected. This will only hold true if you keep you virus definitions up to date, though. Latest versions will do this automatically when you go online, whereas older versions had to be updated manually.

Not sure what route you have to go to keep definitions up-to-date with AVG, but at least the definitions are renewable for life, as opposed to the 12 month subscription offered by the big players.

Not that a hangover from the virus is the probable culprit here, I suspect. On the other hand, if the BIOS is the only thing to have changed since you recovered from the virus, and assuming everything was running smoothly before that, then that’s where I’d look first. What is your current BIOS version?

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I used the Symantec Security Check website to do the scan. It should be the up-to-date difintion.

The current BIOS version showing at the booting is AWARD V6.00PG for Microstar V6368VMS V5.9 120912.

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Well, that’s pretty damning evidence that it’s a software problem. Forget (for now) about monitoring your system’s temperatures. What was the event ID? What was the event source?

I don’t know that you want to dig this deeply, but you can download Microsoft’s debugging tools for Windows and open the crash dump. It may give you a hint. Fair warning, though — it’s not exactly what I’d call user friendly.

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Here is the screen shot. Microsoft could not identify this ID.

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Huh. Their own code and they couldn’t identify it? Gimme a break.

Do you happen to have a Nvidia based graphics card?

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The following message gave me an impression that Microsoft could not identify this error properties. I apologize for my mistake.

My video is an on-board Trident. No AGP slot on this motherboard.

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If you search Eventid.Net for event 1000 from source Save Dump then you get the following description for bugcheck code 0x00000050
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PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA – Occurs on many circumstances and it usually indicates a fault drivers. There are quite a few number of Q articles on Microsoft’s site. Do a search on “0x00000050”.

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If you follow this instruction and search the Microsoft knowledge base for 0x00000050 you will find lots of possible causes, including various Antivirus packages, damaged font files, Video drivers and many more.

StuartR

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It has been 7 days since last unexpected shut down. I finally saw the blue screen today. Any suggestion on this error message will be apprciated:

Cause by the following file: WIN32K.sys
PAGE-FAULT-IN-NOPAGED-AREA
WIN32K.sys – Address BF8917DC based at BF800000, datestamp 3db6d462

If remedy is not available on this problem, maybe I shall re-install the WinXP from scratch again.

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Ugh, I hate this error. It’s one of the more frequent BSOD errors and it’s not very descript.

Before you start from scratch, try the following:

• Update all of your hardware drivers to the most current versions, one at a time.
• Apply all critical updates available on WindowsUpdate. If you haven’t installed Service Pack 1, now is the time.
• Run a CHKDSK and scan the hard drive for errors.[/list]What this error means is that the operating system tried to reference a memory address that is no longer valid. Typically it’s caused by flaky device drivers. If I could be so bold, could you provide a listing of the installed hardware for review?

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Q: Update all of your hardware drivers to the most current versions, one at a time.
A: I believe they are all in the current version.

Q: Apply all critical updates available on WindowsUpdate. If you haven’t installed Service Pack 1, now is the time.
A: Yes, I have done that already.

Q: Run a CHKDSK and scan the hard drive for errors.
A: No error came up.

Q: Could you provide a listing of the installed hardware for review?
A: I am glad to do it. To make sure I will not miss anything, is there a way to get a list of installed hardware in WinXP?

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Dennis, try using MSINFO32. Click on Start – Run and enter msinfo32. When it comes up, select the hardware tab, then click on File – Export – you should be able to save it as a text file, which you can attach to a post. There are other third party pieces of software that you might see recommended, but this is already there on your system, and is exhaustively detailed.

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Dennis,
The following is from a paper by Alex Nichole, Virtual Memory in Windows XP. (partial)

The Non-Paged area. Parts of the System which are so important that they may never be paged out – the area of RAM used for these is called in XP the

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