xp randomly reboots

[7thsense101]

Hi, i've been upgrading this old pc that was running win98 perfectly to winxp home... the system now keeps on randomly rebooting, sometimes when i click a button(any button for that matter) it reboots or even on its own sometimes...

now i've checked the event logs and at first it seemed like it was the acpi, because a fatal error came up in the event log stating it was an acpi prob... so at the moment i've shutdown acpi and installed winxp without it, all seemed to be ok then the rebooting began.

now there are no errors showing up in the event log, so my question being are there any other event logs that would give some information on the error causing the restart? i get no BSOD, and i've turned off auto reboot on error and still nothing

The mother board is a DFI CA63-SC and its running an intel 800mhz cpu, 512mb ram.. originally i thought it may have been the bios, so i found some updates, and the bios is now up to date with the manufacturer supplied updates. is it possible that the bios (if that may be the problem) wouldn't be able to hold winxp upright?

Thanks for any help offered..

[Xpenetrator]

How did you prohibit XP to install an ACPI system?
AFAIK (and that's not soooo much ;)) there are 2 things to do: 1. Select "Standard PC HAL" during install and 2. select something like "PnP BIOS installed: No" in the BIOS. Sounds like your MoBo wanted to behave first but was persuaded later by XP's PnP mechanisms to do not. I'm not sure if this is possible at all on your machine and which of the both steps it's related to, but is IRQ sharing active? It shouldn't.

is it possible that the bios (if that may be the problem) wouldn't be able to hold winxp upright?

Yes, but I'm writing this on an even older and smaller machine (AMD K6-2/550MHz, 392MB RAM) and XP runs (much!) better than I thought. XP installed itself with the "Standard PC" HAL and "NT-APM Legacy Support" without needing my attention. When I select to display hidden devices in Device Manager, I can see that the "NT-APM Legacy Interface Node" is disabled for some unknown reason. Sorry, I'm afraid I can't help you much with this but maybe you found a suggestion in my jabbering. :mrgreen:

[7thsense101]

Thanks for your help, i'll give it a go.... To install winxp without acpi...firstly disable it in your bios, start the winxp install...when you see the installed raid devices check (its right at the beginning) start pressing f5 (it says to press f6 if raid devices are installed) but press f5 repeatedly till another screen appears....on this screen select standard pc, and you're done

[7thsense101]

Ok, so i think i've fixed the prob.... I missed a crucial bios update, the one that supports p3's... Hopefully that fixed it!

[Xpenetrator]

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. Thanks for your explanation how to install XP w/o ACPI... but I just asked because I wanted to get sure you did it right. :mrgreen: But I hope you don't need to do that anymore with the new BIOS.

[7thsense101]

Doesn't seem like it was the bios, just had a random reboot then..... I am stumped are there any other logs that may bring light to the cause of the reboots?

[FC Jamison]

I have also noted in the past that a bad RAM chip can cause all kinds of wierd errors from random reboots to erroneous video driver errors.

I once had a problem with my XP machine either crashing when opening outlook to reply to an e-mail of just shutting down outlook. When the whole system crashed, Windows reported a video driver error.

After taking it to the computer shop twice and replacing both the video card and the motherboard...I finally narrowed the problem down to one of my RAM modules.

Once that was replaced...no more problems.

[Xpenetrator]

FC Jamison is right. That your RAM chips ran fine on Win98 doesn't mean they must work with XP, too. Once I had a module that made file compression impossible (CRC error), only when the files to compress were above a certain size. Extremely subtle error - everything else ran just fine. I tested the modules with Memtest86 and one turned out to have two bad addresses. XP may put essential things to such a memory address that 98 never touched. Download here: www.memtest86.com

[7thsense101]

i believe your both right, just removed a 32mb dodgy stick that was running along side a 512mb kingston stick..... and suprise suprise haven't had a reboot yet! touch wood!

[7thsense101]

ok so i've re-opened this post... so far i've:

*Disabled acpi -> which prevents the acpi error, but the system still reboots

*Removed dodgy ram and tested the existing ram -> all ok

*Replaced the power supply -> still restarting

which leaves me with this question, if the mobo or h/d was faulty would they run fine under win 98 but crash under winxp? coz i think they're my last thing to check n change?

[FC Jamison]

does it still reboot in safe mode?

[7thsense101]

so far no reboot in safe mode... but the reboots are quite random, so i can't be too sure yet! if windows holds up in safe mode, what do think may be the cause?

[7thsense101]

ok... so it does reboot in safe mode...

[FC Jamison]

Well...if you get random reboots in safe mode...chances are it is a hardware issue.

You might try replacing the RAM...just in case...but beyond that...you're most likely looking at a motherboard or video card issue.

or even worse...a processor problem.

[7thsense101]

just what i didn't want to hear! thanks for your help, much appreciated