Spontaneous reboots [SOLVED]

jabster42 · Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 1:43 pm Post subject: Spontaneous reboots [SOLVED]

HI.

Not sure if this is exactly the right place to ask this, but.....my computer keeps spontaneously rebooting. I don't think it is a software problem, but am not sure.

It can be anywhere from a few minutes to several hours before it just reboots me. SYstem logs never show any kind of errors prior to the reboot.

Here's what I've done so far:
1. Replace the motherboard. Happened to have an identical MB lying around, so I used that one becuase it wouldn't even require a kernel recompile. No change, put original MB back in.
2. While swapping components on the MB, I noticed the fan on my geforce2 was completely siezed up. Bought a geforce 6600. No improvement.
3. Just got a new 500W power supply. Put that in, everything seemed to be good until about 5 hours later, when it rebooted on me again.

What else can I do here?

Am I right in thinking this a hardware problem and not a software problem? And if so, any recommendations of what to do next?

thanks,
john

Sysetm:
MB: Soyo K7VTA-Pro with Athlon 2100+
768M ram
Geforce 6600 (AGP)
USB2 card
TVin card (not being used, but installed)
SMC NIC
SBLive Value
CDROM
DVD burner
floppy
20G HD
gentoo 2005.1, kde3.4, ~x86 keywords (tho it was rebooting with my 2004.x install as well)

nixnut · Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 2:00 pm Post subject:

Check the temperatures. Perhaps one of the fans is not working properly anymore. And check the memory by running memtest86. Try to run all tests at least 3 times.
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jabster42 · Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 2:16 pm Post subject:

Hi.
I did check all my fans, and all are working properly. Even put a new, bigger fan on the cpu. Temps tho I couldn't tell you, as I don't have anything setup to monitor that. It does show me a temp at boot time, but it's always been about the same (tho I don't remember the actual temp off hand). I'll try and get it hooked back up and power on and see what the MB reports.
I have the CPU fan, the PSU fans, and two case fans pulling air thru the case (front to back I think).

I ran memtest86 on the board overnight before my 2005.1 install, no errors.

Just had an idea.....can a bad battery on the MB cause this?

Just tried to power it on, and MB told me something along the lines of "The processor may not be installed properly." Hard to tell exactly exactly what it's saying (yes, it does talk). But I know the processor is installed and setup properly, as it was working for quite some time prior to this rebooting problem.

Or could it be the CPU itself?

thx,
john

Richie · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 52 Location: Home

I also had a computer restart at random a couple of years ago. Turned out to be a short circuit in the cdrom drive.

:idea:

If I were you, I'd pull out everything except what's nescessary to run your computer.

Remove optical drives, tv-card, nic, etc. and if that helps, put one in after the other, until the problem reoccures. Then you'll know what piece of hardware caused the problem.

Since you tried with a different mobo, psu, graphics board, and memtest86, you can be pretty sure that is not the problem.

Hope this helps / Richie

jabster42 · Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 2:58 pm Post subject:

jabster42 · Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 5:43 pm Post subject:

Well, figured it out I think.

It's the goram USB2 card again.

FIrst one I bought just died after a couple of weeks. Couldn't hook a second device to it unless I rebooted the machine. This one has been functioning just fine, but apparently still has a problem. Been up nearly 2 days with no reboot.

Time to buy a new MB I guess, since I need USB2, and this continuous USB2 card swapping is starting to get to me.

thanks for the advice,
john