Hello Everyone I am new to this site (as obviously stated above).

I have a few questions. Maybe someone can help. A few months ago I built a new computer, being tried of my old Dell. Well everything is fine and well for a while, but recently my computer has been restarting at random times. It restarts after a few minutes, after a few hours, when playing games, when doing nothing at all. But usually when playing games. All of my drivers are updated. I unistalled and reinstalled all my devices. My Windows is up to date.

I am thinking it might be my power supply I have a 420w Power Supply. I am not sure about how much that can support but here are some things I have hooked up to it. I have three Hardrives, 120g 120g, 200g. A DVD burner. 2 80 mm Fans. Radeon 9800 XT. 2 UV Cold Cath Bulbs (hooked up to one inverter). Vantec Spectrum Fan Card. I am not sure if that is too much I do not know too much about that area.

If anyone has any Ideas, please contribute them!

Also one more thing. When I check under Device Manager and I expand Display Adapters, I see Two Radeon 9800 XT, Except one is listed as a secondary. That might be it. Everytime I reinstall my card or drivers it is still there. It just detects the second card and installs the drivers Automatically. I can disable it, but I would like to solve this problem. I have physically removed the card and put a different one in. A GeForce, and that one worked fine, It only showed up once. However, Even when using that card it still restarts regardless. EVeything just messed at once. If you have had the patience to read through all of this then I allready thank you. If you can help me fix any of this I will name my first born child after you! Thanks in advance for your time!

Again if you need any more information please let me know, screen shots or system specs etc.

David

First thought is processor overheating. I had exactly the same problem when I upgraded my current home desktop PC with a new processor. Despite the existing fan being supposedly capable of dealing with the new processor it wasn't. Get a demo version of a system monitor and check out your temperatures. I ended up with round IDE cables and the biggest fan you ever did see but my processor runs at around 40C max now...

My thoughts are perhaps borne out by the number of heat generating components you have installed. Also check the direction of your fans. You need to establish an airflow throughput - in at the front and out at the back or vice versa. Careful cable routeing within the case to minimise airflow disruption.

I would think that a 420W PSU should run all that lot but I note when I just checked the ATI website was that your graphics card requires 300W which gives some pause for thought.... :!:
Insufficient power could also cause these symptoms.


Could this be as simple as the card identifying two complementary graphics devices, such as VGA and DVI? I don't know the card myself so this is just a theory. If it works okay who cares how the system represents it?

One other cause for random reboots is of course viruses...check your a/v is up to date, make sure you have some kind of firewall - the Windows built in firewall in XP is pretty good. Try Ad-aware from lavasoft.de to check for spyware.

In general the best way to troubleshoot this sort of thing is to strip anything unnecessary from the PC, see if it works and then gradually add in again, one device at a time. Sadly if this is a power consumption issue then this won't prove anything...

If the system is clean, but still crashing the the worst case scenario is that one of the crashes has caused some internal corruption in an important file somewhere but try to rule out everything else before you try to fix something that isn't necessarily broken.

HTH!

Aside from the possibilities mentioned above, a bad stick of RAM could be the cause as well. Download and run memtest86; it will do a pretty thorough test of your RAM and will indicate whether or not the RAM is good.

Thanks for the responses thus far. I tired all of them and here is my report:

Well I have a few heat monitoring devices. They all report about 40C for my CPU. I also got rid of my stock fan and got a cooler master. So over heating is not the problem.

The air flow is par. With front fan intake, Rear fan exhaust, and a side fan intake.

I checked with ATI. The Radeon showing up twice under display adapters is how it is meant to be. That was by design, so when I disable one, I am hurting performance. However The Radeon is not my problem. I have a weaker Nvidia, that I tried swapping out but I was still restarting at random times.

I just finished formating my hardrive and reinstalling windows. Adding in one piece at a time. Well it restarts even after a fresh install. before the majority of device drivers are even loaded. Alas I fear it may be a harware problem.

So on to my memory. I tested that and it came up clean. Although after all of that stuff I did I thought I had that nailed. I thought my memory was the culprit. I now have 1536mb of ram. I have two sticks of 512mb and two of 256mb (yes I checked, my motherboard can support up to 3gb of ram). I have tried every combination of RAM. I tried just having 1gb. I tried 512mb. It passes the mem test, and no matter what combo I use my PC restarts.

I am out of ideas. This is a harcdore problem. If it is hardware, then fine, I have a warrenty for everything. Problem is what is broken? I ruled out my videocard and my memory, however This really seems like a memory issue. Anyone else have any ideas?

One more thing. Pictured below this is a screenshot of ALL of my system specs. If you need anything else, please let me know. Unfortunatly, the pic was too big to upload here (421KB). So I zipped it up. Thanks in advance for your time!

David

no ideas eh? I agree. This is a pretty crappy problem!

BIOS reset?

Try a burn in program .
http://www.passmark.com/

Just a thought, although about 90% of the time when I have a reboot issue like this, it is RAM I have also experienced this with main power feeds. Check these things because I have had this problem at least once with each of them. Is the wall socket that you plug your powerstrip or PC into loose? It should firmly grip the plug. Replace the powerstrip if you are using one. I had a good one fail like this, it was just too sensitive inside its circuitry and would randomly shut off and come back on. Good luck.

I had the exact same problem recently. I had run all of the diags I could think of, I had even run Sandra's burn-in wizard for about 48 hours straight, just to see what I could turn up.

Memory was fine, CPU was okay-- my temps were actually at about 37C (i've got a Swiftech MCX-462V with a Vantec Tornado 92mm fan on it), so overheating wasn't an issue. Turns out, I reached behind my system to unplug something, and I felt some seriously hot air coming out of the back of the PSU. I checked, and the fan was making about 10 RPM, when it should be doing about 2500 RPM!!!

I swapped out my $15 Pricewatch special with a decent Fortron 400w that I picked up, and now it's running great-- no reboots!