Random shut down, freezing and rebooting before windows?

[bigtye]

yes another "my pc is rebooting", sorry but I need help.

Rig is:
mobo Gigabyte ep43 DS3L
Q8200 stock clocks
2gb corsair 8500
PSU 620HX corsair (was coolermaster 450w)
GPU Gigabyte 4670 (was 1950 pro)
HD 500gb Samsung F1
XP SP3 32bit

When I first built it, I installed xp SP3 and noticed that once or twice it would post at start up, go to load windows (black screen before the little loading bar) and then crash with the monitor indicating no signal before it rebooted again, before loading windows normally.

Being only my second build I ignored this problem

Anyway, it didn't happen much, maybe once a week, so I replaced the 450w coolermaster with a 620w Corsair. problem still happened once a week.

I ran memtest, but it picked up nothing.

I swapped ram slots, problem still happens.

I swap gpu to current 4670.

I swap ram to ocz 1066, no change.

Now the problem has gotten worse. It takes numerous attempts at start up to load up to windows and stay there, and even then it will crash 3-4 times a day.

At load up now it typically cycles through the post screen a few times before making it to windows log in, where upon it will freeze and need to be restarted. This will normally happen 1 or twice before it stays running. When it crashes during th day it seems to reboot back into windows first go, without all the hanging and freezing.

My windows error screens when it does load up say that the computer has recovered from a blue screen event but that the error logs are corrupted and cannot be read, also telling me that this is rare and indicitive of serious problems.

What's left that could be the problem?

I have a gigabyte ep45 mb and was going to connect up the hd and try and load it up on the system in my sig just rule out any software cause. Is my ep45 similar enough that it will boot and run the hd from the ep43?

Is it probably my mobo? Have I ruled enough stuff out to put in an rma on the mobo?

Thanks
Tye

Ok, swapped out the hd from the ep43 board and run it on another system. It booted fine and went into windows (of course windows now wants to be reactivated).

So I guess I've ruled out software prob (and hd). So it's down to the last two hardware pieces, cpu and mb.

[Black Panther]

Originally Posted by bigtye

it would post at start up, go to load windows (black screen before the little loading bar) and then crash with the monitor indicating no signal before it rebooted again, before loading windows normally.

For me sounds like a problem occuring just before graphics start loading.

If your mobo got onboard graphics, check if the problem occurs if you plug monitor to onboard and remove the dedicated card.

Now this might sound stupid but I seen it on 2 of our work computers - they'd freeze or go to standby (orange monitor power button) for apparently no reason. Then I'd open up the pc, press the dedicated graphics hard in place (very hard), and problem gets solved.

I suspect it's a mobo problem - one of the above work pc's I took for my kid to use. If the pc gets hit accidentally, even just slightly, it will post but the monitor button remain on standby.
Then I press hard the graphics card into the slot, and it works again...

[Mike0409]

Have you tried a different sata port to see if that fixes the problem?

Did you use the same cable when you swapped from one board to another? Could have a bad SATA cable.

Also try going into advanced options F8 before window's starts... and select the Disable Automatic Reboot After Failure option. It will only be used for that one instance running window's but it should give you a Stop Code. If you can get that code, you can find out which device is causing it.

Also check your BIOS to make sure your HD Mode is set to IDE and not ACHI, that could cause you a problem as well.

CPU Failures usually fall around a no POST. Hit power everything spins up but nothing gets initiated.

[mosheen]

did you try clearing the CMOS??

[bigtye]

Cheers for the replies guys. Quick update. I ran more thorrough memtesting at the bequest of someone. Running my ram in slots 2/4 I ran extended test for 10 hrs no prob. Moving ram to slots 1/3 (colour matched) and starting memtest again, it froze on the first pass. I am now running it in slot 1 only to see if I can localise the slot.

I will try to scrounge up another sata cable to swap with the one in the system to rule that out.

Tye

[temp02]

Run "chkdsk C:\ /F", reboot and let it do the scan (Warning: this will take 2~3 hours).
It will check your hard drive for damaged sectors and recover/replace them.

[bigtye]

ok, ran 1 stick in slot for several hours on memtest (extended tests) then switched that stick to slot 3 and restarted. PC kept loading the gigabyte bios screen then black screening and restarting. Couldn't even get to boot off cd to run memtest.

I guess slot 3 is a definite problem, other slots may have probs but not showing up in memtest. New board, rma and start again.

I will run the chdsk temp02 once I get the new board in, I have been worried about my hd geting corrupted from all the crashing, but didn't know how to deal with that so cheers.

Thanks everyone for your input, you feel so much more confident tackling tech problems knowing that you've got so many peolple behind who can help with advice.

Tye