Topic: Spontaneous reboot

[jere]

My pc has rebooted itself four times this morning for no apparent reason.  Each time I was doing something different so I don't think it's application related.  This is a PIII 500mhz with 256 ram and running windows xp home.  This has happened before, but not this many times in one day.  Can anyone offer any insight?

[Sandra]

I am not too clued up on XP but it sounds like it may be "A virtual Memory" problem.Were the programs that you were running at the time very heavy resource users?
Also were there a lot of programs running in the background that you may not have been aware of?

[Adept]

Hi jere

Do you get any sort of error message before it reboots?

[Simon]

I found this - hope it's of some use, Jere, and welcome to PC Pals!  

Auto Reboot On System Crash[/u]

By default, when the Windows XP operating system crashes an automatic reboot of the system occurs. While this behavior can be convenient, the downside is the error message accompanying the crash is not visible. Often times this information can be a great help in troubleshooting the source of the crash. This behavior can be modified as follows:


Open System Properties via Start > Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > System
[ System Properties may also be opened using the WinKey+Pause key combination ]
Select the Advanced tab and then click Settings in the Startup and Recovery section
In System Failure section, clear the checkbox next to Automatically Restart
Click OK and OK to exit
 
 

It should be noted that when you disable the Automatic Restart option you may be presented with the screen below.



This is most likely to occur if the page file has been relocated to a different drive in order to improve virtual memory performance.

By disabling Auto Reboot, you may be able to see the error message, and thus discover the cause of the crash.  

[bat69]

Sounds like you require to increase your Virtual Memory setting

Can you tell us what it is?

[jere]

My virtual memeory is set at 959mb and the page file is located on another drive, (not the boot drive).  I have reset my system so that I do not get the auto restart if there is a problem.  I'll see if that helps to identify the problem when (if) it happens again.

[bat69]

Ok thanks for that jere

Hope it all goes well and your problem is solved ... please feel free to join in with the fun here too  

[Simon]

Bat, doesn't VM have to be a multiple of RAM?  Jere's 959 seems an odd figure, or doesn't it matter?

[bat69]

Yeah does seem an odd size

The usual size is 1.5 times the amount of RAM

Microsoft Knowledge Base

But I tend to opt for 2 times RAM ... and I've seen anything up to 4 times, but don't think it helps that much

[jere]

Thanks for all the comments so far.  Here is more complete info on the way my virtual memory is set up:
I have two physical hard drives, with one split into two partitions.  C is my boot drive, D & E are actually two partitions on the second drive.  The virtual memory page file shows as 288-576 on each of the C & D drives.  The radio button that says "system managed size" is highlighted.  At the bottom of the Virtual Memory dialog box it says the "Minimum Allowed is 2 mb, Recommended is 382 mb, and the Currently Allocated is 959 mb.  Does any of this help?

[jere]

Sorry, I made an error on the previous post.  The paging files are on the D & E drives, NOT the C drive.