Topic: System Keep's Restarting

[Flanjeuk]

Hello All!

My system restart's it self randomly!
I have no clue why.
Sometimes it could happen once in a week, and other times (like today) it could happen 3 times!

My system is:
Windows XP Home SP2 (not a copy)
AMD Athlon XP 1700+
256MB SDRAM
It's a cheap PC from "the computer shop" (the one that sells Tiny PC's)
The make is Collosus

After it restarts and I log back in, i always get the same message, "system has recovered from a serious error, do you want to report this"
And I report it ever time, and it says, It was caused by a driver error but it can't determine the exact cause or a solution.

Any help or advice welcomed,

Thanks in advance,
John

[Clive]

Your post has not gone unnoticed John and you will get a reply as soon as possible.

[Dack]

Problem is it could be almost anything

Usual problems:
1. Heat - has the fan on the processor/graphics card/motherboard/power supply started getting a bit noisy?

2. Power supply related - as some of the components have got older their tolerances change and you can suddenly get a bit more of a power drain when stressing the machine.

3. Memory showing errors due to heat/speed.

4. Dodgy driver installed with software/windows update.

It could pass as a driver error when some piece of hardware is failing, in turn causing the driver to crash. Have a look in start->control panel->system tools->computer management->Events->system to see if there are any more clues

When does the lockup occur? I'd duess when you are pushing the machine a bit - if so my first look would be at the graphics card settings. This is especially true if build in graphics using shared memory is being used.

[Flanjeuk]

Well...

It's never when I'm pushing the system at all, it's totally random!

erm... I can't get into control panel, something messed up that I can't be bothered to fix!

And the graphics card.. I just got a new one about 2 weeks ago, but it happened before that too!

The fan has always been noisy!

The system has been Formatted quite a lot of times since it was bought, and it's always happened before, the only reason I decided to ask about it was because it did it 3 times today and it's annoying me!

[Sandra]

One way I find that stops random reboots is to right click on my computer, select properties then go to advanced then Start up and Recovery Settings and untick the Automatic Restart under System Failure.
XP tends to reboot at the slightest error, often seemingly needlessly so. Unticking that box can cut it down from a few times a day/week to once or twice every few months, if at all, with any luck  

[Flanjeuk]

I did what you said Sandra, and so far so good, hasn't restarted since  

Hope it stays this way!

[Simon]

Thanks for letting us know, FJ!