Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Fineus on January 09, 2005, 05:46:30 am
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Hey all,
Having another spot of computer trouble. Since I got back to Uni yesterday its started randomly rebooting again for no apparent reason. This was not happening at home.
I checked out the status in BIOS and temperatures were normal. However the "battery voltage" was fluctuating. This gave me a thought - my halls room is on a capped voltage so that students can't use to much power. Could fluctuations in the grid be having an effect... causing the PC to reboot?
I'm worried about loosing data again (of course I've backed up - but don't really want to shell out for any damaged parts).
Does anyone know how I can check, and what options are open to me to make sure it stops happening? Something like this did happen last term but eventually it settled down and I've no idea why.
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the battery is on your mainboard so the power grid has nothing to do with it and it looks like it needs replacing, but i dunno why it would cause resets
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[color=66ff00]Those batteries don't really fluctuate at the end of their lives though, they pretty much show an exponential decay in output so at one point they can't deliver the (pretty damn smal) current required and they're effectively useless.
Also these caps on power generally aren't so restrictive from what I've seen of uni's over here, they're put in place in case anyone tries to build a Stargate out of a few microwaves and a waffle iron.
Have you noticed the lights flickering or power surges in any of your other gear?
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Check your PSU voltage if you can. That'll tell you if the mains input is causing problems for you, but my guess is the PSU itself is probably on its way out. Try sticking a mate's into yours, or if you have a spare, swap it round and see if it still occurs. If it does, then it's not likely to be the mains unless other people are having the same problem.
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Weather been a bit windy lately? Could just be the power grid in general.
Invest in a power adapter with surge protection, but thats not really a solution to this specific problem.
Could it be a virus? I had one that did this a while ago, though it always told you when it was about to reboot.
Check your reboot button isn't fux0red either, could be something loose in the wiring, as simple as it sounds.
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Things have gone from bad to worse I'm afraid. It now refuses to boot past the BIOS. I can get as far as Windows mode selection (safe mode, normal, last good config etc..) but when I choose it then hangs after attempting to boot.
I suppose it could be a virus - if anyone has any idea if this has been heard of before?
I don't think it's my own PSU as - as I said - its been fine at home. Only now that I've got it here (and indeed on the uni network and internet connection) has this become a problem. So it could well be a virus... but I'm not entirely sure.
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Now thats queer. My mate from uni had the same thing last night! He reinstalled from the recovery disc and all is now grand.
This sounds like beatspete is right.
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Check to see if you're memory(indeed, all of your components) is seated properly?
Run this (http://www.memtest.org/) to make sure the memory is working properly. Takes a couple of hours, but you should know in considerably less time if one of your modules has gone belly up.
restore a backup of you're registry from a time when it was working properly.
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Hmm, this is all turning out very strangely indeed.
I tried removing one of the memory sticks - and Windows promptly started complaining about a missing system driver file. I replaced the stick and it's now booting without any problems at all, hasn't frozen while its been on and doesn't seem to have any viruses either.
I'm totally stumped. I mean I don't know what has changed - I've not replaced anything... not charged anything or moved anything around.
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It's magic. ;)
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Or it could mean your hard drive is about to go.:(
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How old are some of the components in question like the hard drive and memory?
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The hard drives should be in good condition - I fail to believe that either of them have been through such abuse that they fail like this.
The curious thing is that I had the exact same problem (more or less) when I first bought my machine to Uni at the start of the term. Things straightened themselves out although I ended up shelling out for a new hard drive which seemed to work.
Memory is a bit older - but I don't think its been through anything different here than it has at home.
I really can't see a reason for parts to suddenly start failing here when they've been fine in my own home.
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My PC reboots itself whenever it runs out of virtual memory. It never runs out of physical memory, but it does run out of virtual memory when I'm running the high poly versions of Modelview32... Memory usage goes up to about 66% and then everything just shuts down and the PC reboots.
So I increased the paging file, and never let modelview go that high. :p Bloody memory leak...
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Could just be that the transport bounced it around a little bit, and as the computer warms up, parts expand slightly, which can cause a sudden loss of contact between loose pins etc. Just make sure all the connections are firm, I get this problem on my computer whenever it's doing system intensive stuff, and that's with three fans running, but I can't find what's causing it :(
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
Hmm, this is all turning out very strangely indeed.
I tried removing one of the memory sticks - and Windows promptly started complaining about a missing system driver file. I replaced the stick and it's now booting without any problems at all, hasn't frozen while its been on and doesn't seem to have any viruses either.
I'm totally stumped. I mean I don't know what has changed - I've not replaced anything... not charged anything or moved anything around.
Dude, that meant that you had a loose part. Sometimes if you hit any bumps, you could slightly dislodge parts to the point where they barely make any contact with the pins, which can cause a wide array of odd problems.
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
The hard drives should be in good condition - I fail to believe that either of them have been through such abuse that they fail like this.
The curious thing is that I had the exact same problem (more or less) when I first bought my machine to Uni at the start of the term. Things straightened themselves out although I ended up shelling out for a new hard drive which seemed to work.
You had to replace the HD right after you bought it? We had the same problem, got this Compaq and around 5 months later we called Tech support and they told us our HD is gone. They sent us a new one, but they told us if it ever did happen again, we would have to send the whole CPU back to them. They said it could be something with the Motherboard. Maybe you should check in with your Tech support just to be sure.:doubt:
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Hard drives are funny things, i've had 13 month old drives die on me for no reason.
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I really hope it's not a case of that - I keep good care of the machine as a whole and generally speaking, the HDs shouldn't just be going like that.
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General rule of electronics: if it don't fail in the first year, it won't fail.
That said, anything mechanical can wear out and you can't expect a 10 year old drive to hold up forever.
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IIRC, there is a register in the ESCD that determines the appropriate gates for RAM, and sometimes that gets corrupt/conflicts after adding new hardware. When you removed a stick from your board, the other stick became unstable, indicating there was a problem with an invalid location. When you added the memory stick back in, the ESCD would be required to update itself because it found new memory, and thus had to remap the addresses, thus creating a brand new table that should be free of corruption. Happens all the time. However, if it happens again in the next few months, I would replace the battery.
Either that, or both your DIMMs were housed incorrectly. I see that alot too ;).
And remember, "Reset Configuration Data" is your friend, and "PnP OS Installed" is your enemy.