Computer restarting

[Stephen Coates]

I tried safe mode, but that had the same problem.

I will investigate the hard drive.

I may also try a clean installation on a spare partition as well.

[J T]

If memtest ran fine, then that means your ram is fine. It spouts out errors fairly quickly with dodgy ram.

I found that memtest (both the win version and the bootable) could be a bit hit and miss. When I had some bad RAM it would sometimes through up heaps of errors, and other times it would sail through clear. It was most odd, and meant I struggled along for ages. I tried swapping sticks round, into different slots and could never quite pin it down to one stick/slot. Maybe not so relevant to Steve's thread, mind.

I don't have any suggestions, really, other than just chucking stuff out.... clean install perhaps?

[Bloodwych]

Interesting to know JT, I do put a lot of faith in that proggie especially when overclocking!

Niggling computer problems are annoying. Unless someone has a direct cure, it ends up just guess work and a process of elimination.

[Stephen Coates]

Here is my memory and the settings in the BIOS, in case anyone can use it to figure out the problem.

pcmemory01.jpg
pcmemory02.jpg
pcmemory03.jpg

BTW, I like the snow on the forum.

[Harrison]

Looking at your image of the ram it is DDR2 1GB PC2-6400 ram with a maximum speed of 800MHz.

SPD (default) Timings = 5-5-5-12
Maximum Timings = 4-4-4-12

DRAM Voltage = 2.0V

Full details of your ram can be found at http://images.crucial.com/pdf/datash...in%20DIMMs.pdf

Also what CPU are you using? Have you checked the FSB is the correct speed?

Maybe reset the CMOS in your system to clear the BIOS and let it auto detect everything again to make sure, and manually alter it after if needed.

[burns flipper]

I'd put the BIOS back to default and then fine-tune it again at a later date, see if that changes things. Let the BIOS detect everything and make the settings rather than do it yourself.

[Stephen Coates]

Its still doing it.

I just did a reinstall and it still does it.

I'm pretty sure there is something wrong somewhere.

[Harrison]

You need to strip the system down to the bare minimum. Just the Motherboard, CPU, one stick of ram, and graphics card.

Then power it up and leave it running in the BIOS screen for a day. If the BIOS has a system monitoring/temperature screen, showing the CPU temp and fan speeds, leave it on that screen so you can monitor it. If after a day it is still running, you can say the motherboard and CPU are perfectly OK. This won't have taxed the ram or graphics card much though so they could still be a problem.

Next you will want to test the ram using one of the utilities you can find on the HiRen's boot CD. So you will need to connect a CD drive and you might also need a HDD depending on the utility being used. Boot the CD and run a memory test, and leave that running for at least 4 hours. If that is fine. If you are using more than one stick of ram, then run the memory tests for a few hours with each of the ram individually just to rule them out.

The final test with the hardware you have connected is the graphics card. To fully test this you will need to run an intensive test like a benchmarking utility such as 3DMark or something compatible with Linux. But if all that passes, other than the graphics card, it would point to something other than the main parts of the hardware being a problem.

[Stephen Coates]

Thanks for the tips harrison.

[Stephen Coates]

I'm running a stress test thingy using a programme called S&M which is included on Hirens BootCD.

It currently has my CPU temperature up to 44 degrees C.