A7N8X reboots all by itself! Good feature...

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dgk

A7N8X Deluxe Version 2 with ATI9600 AIW Video, XP-Pro, 1gb Black Level
2 (Micro I think) memory. It has rebooted spontaneously since I put it
together around a year ago, once very other day or so. Then it comes
up with a message about recovering from a serious error. Sometimes.
Sometimes is doesn't but the next time I'll get two messages. It will
often reboot when nothing is happening except some downloading from
internet, or with nothing happening at all. In fact, it rarely happens
if I'm actively working on it. Two SATA 120 gig drives (raid-0) and a
standard IDE 80 gig for backups. Plus a Plextor DVD burner (712A) and
some 52X CD burner.

I figured that the power supply was weird but never managed to do
anything about it until a few days ago. I pulled it out of the case
and put it in a new, quieter, case with a new power supply (FSP Aurora
350 watt - but an honest and solid 350). For two days it was fine, now
it rebooted twice in two hours.

I have quite a few other systems running and none of them do this. I
upgraded to the latest bios (1008 I think) just to be on the safe
side. Antivirus is Computer Associates thing.

Any guesses as to what is going on here? I'll look around for new
drivers for the video card and stuff.
 
dgk said:
A7N8X Deluxe Version 2 with ATI9600 AIW Video, XP-Pro, 1gb Black Level
2 (Micro I think) memory. It has rebooted spontaneously since I put it
together around a year ago, once very other day or so. Then it comes
up with a message about recovering from a serious error. Sometimes.
Sometimes is doesn't but the next time I'll get two messages. It will
often reboot when nothing is happening except some downloading from
internet, or with nothing happening at all. In fact, it rarely happens
if I'm actively working on it. Two SATA 120 gig drives (raid-0) and a
standard IDE 80 gig for backups. Plus a Plextor DVD burner (712A) and
some 52X CD burner.

I figured that the power supply was weird but never managed to do
anything about it until a few days ago. I pulled it out of the case
and put it in a new, quieter, case with a new power supply (FSP Aurora
350 watt - but an honest and solid 350). For two days it was fine, now
it rebooted twice in two hours.

I have quite a few other systems running and none of them do this. I
upgraded to the latest bios (1008 I think) just to be on the safe
side. Antivirus is Computer Associates thing.

Any guesses as to what is going on here? I'll look around for new
drivers for the video card and stuff.
Click to expand...

Start with heat and memory. What are your room, case and CPU temperatures
(idle and under load)?
Have you ever really tested the memory? Get Memtest and run it several
hours.
PSU. Solid 350 Watts or not, you have a lot of stuff hung off it. What
happens if you disconnect the 80 gig IDE and the CD burner? Does the system
still reboot?
 
Go into System Properties and under Advanced - Startup and Recovery,
Disable the "Automatically restart"

You should then get an error instead of the machine restarting.
 
Start with heat and memory. What are your room, case and CPU temperatures
(idle and under load)?
Have you ever really tested the memory? Get Memtest and run it several
hours.
PSU. Solid 350 Watts or not, you have a lot of stuff hung off it. What
happens if you disconnect the 80 gig IDE and the CD burner? Does the system
still reboot?
Click to expand...

I should have mentioned that. I did run memtest for twelve hours when
I first put it together. The system is somewhat overclocked, but not
too much. Shortly after I put it together and it did the reboot thing
I set it as normal 2500 but it made no difference.

I will drop off the CDR and that spare drive. Heat shouldn't be a
problem but I haven't been running MM for a while. I'll check it in
the bios. It has a Zalman 700AlCu cooler and it is winter so the house
is only around 68F. The air coming out the case and psu isn't even
warm. Well, it hasn't rebooted since I put in new video drivers, but
it's only been a few hours.
 
Go into System Properties and under Advanced - Startup and Recovery,
Disable the "Automatically restart"

You should then get an error instead of the machine restarting.
Click to expand...

Ok, good idea - and done. There are some interesting things in the
event log. Apparently one of my other machines (an MSI K7T266) is
insisting on being the primary browser and forcing an election. That
seems interesting. I'll watch that closely if I can catch when it
reboots.
 
I had a similar re-boot problem with my system. I finally had to
switch my two 512 ram chips from slot 1 and 2 to slot 1 and 3 and have
not had a reboot problem since. No problem ever showed up with the
memory while running the ram test.

steve
 
Run Prime95 to test your memory, northbridge and CPU. If Prime95 crashes try to change memory or change the memory settings in the bios. I had this problem with an A7N8X-X, Sempron 2400+ and Kingston 512Mb DDR400 memory. In my case the memory was running on 200MHz (fsb 166MHz) and that was my problem.

HTH, Werner


"Steve" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht I had a similar re-boot problem with my system. I finally had to switch my two 512 ram chips from slot 1 and 2 to slot 1 and 3 and have not had a reboot problem since. No problem ever showed up with the memory while running the ram test.

steve

dgk wrote:


Go into System Properties and under Advanced - Startup and Recovery,
Disable the "Automatically restart"

You should then get an error instead of the machine restarting.


Ok, good idea - and done. There are some interesting things in the
event log. Apparently one of my other machines (an MSI K7T266) is
insisting on being the primary browser and forcing an election. That
seems interesting. I'll watch that closely if I can catch when it
reboots.
 
I had a similar re-boot problem with my system. I finally had to
switch my two 512 ram chips from slot 1 and 2 to slot 1 and 3 and have
not had a reboot problem since. No problem ever showed up with the
memory while running the ram test.

steve
Click to expand...

I'll have to check the slots. Doesn't that disable dual channel?
 
Run Prime95 to test your memory, northbridge and CPU. If Prime95 crashes try to change memory or change the memory settings in the bios. I had this problem with an A7N8X-X, Sempron 2400+ and Kingston 512Mb DDR400 memory. In my case the memory was running on 200MHz (fsb 166MHz) and that was my problem.

HTH, Werner
Click to expand...

I did run prime95 back at the build. Ok, I'll try it again.
 
Go into System Properties and under Advanced - Startup and Recovery,
Disable the "Automatically restart"

You should then get an error instead of the machine restarting.
Click to expand...

Got the error. It was that irql_not_less_that_or_equal. Here is MS on
the topic. I'll have to get more info the next time it happens. The
odd thing is, it happened at 4:45am. Nothing had happened on that
machine for hours.

------------------------------------------------------------------

General Information on STOP 0x0000000A
Article ID : 130802
Last Review : November 21, 2003
Revision : 1.0
This article was previously published under Q130802
On this Page
SUMMARY
MORE INFORMATION

SUMMARY
One of the more frequent trap codes generated by Windows NT is STOP
0x0000000A. This STOP message can be caused by both hardware and
software problems. To determine the specific cause, you must debug the
STOP. However, some general information can be learned by examining
the parameters of the STOP message and the STOP screen information.
MORE INFORMATION
STOP 0x0000000A indicates a kernel mode process or driver attempted to
access a memory address that it did not have permission to access. The
most common cause of this error is a bad or corrupt pointer that
references an incorrect location in memory. A pointer is a variable
used by a program to refer to a block of memory. If the variable has a
bad value in it, then the program tries to access memory that it
should not. When this occurs in a user mode application, it generates
an access violation. When it occurs in kernel mode, it generates a
STOP 0x0000000A message.

To determine what process or driver tried to access memory it should
not, look at the parameters displayed on the STOP screen information.
For example, in the following STOP message
STOP 0x0000000A(0xWWWWWWWW, 0xXXXXXXXX, 0xYYYYYYYY, 0xZZZZZZZZ)
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
** Address 0xZZZZZZZZ has base at <address>- <driver>


The four parameters inside the parenthesis have the following meaning:
0xWWWWWWWW Address that was referenced improperly
0xXXXXXXXX IRQL that was required to access the memory
0xYYYYYYYY Type of access, 0=Read, 1=Write
0xZZZZZZZZ Address of instruction which attempted to reference
the memory at 0xWWWWWWWW


If the last parameter (0xZZZZZZZZ) falls within the address range of
one of the device drivers loaded on the system, you will know which
device driver was running when the memory access occurred. This driver
is often identified in the third line of the STOP screen:

**Address 0xZZZZZZZZ has base at <address>- <driver name>

If <driver name> is a specific driver, search in the Microsoft
Knowledge Base on the keyword 0x0000000A and the driver name. If you
don't find any relevant articles, contact Microsoft Product Support.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Just remembered something - If your system is overclocked and you use Cool
And Quiet - You may get those errors. My system is overclocked 10% and I
have to disable the Cool and Quiet to stop getting those errors.
 
Just remembered something - If your system is overclocked and you use Cool
And Quiet - You may get those errors. My system is overclocked 10% and I
have to disable the Cool and Quiet to stop getting those errors.
Click to expand...

The A7N8X is a Socket-A board, it doesn't have Cool and Quiet.
Ed
 
dgk said:
I'll have to check the slots. Doesn't that disable dual channel?
Click to expand...

Dual-channel needs RAM in slots 1 & 3, or 1, 2 & 3. Any other
combination will result in single channel operation on this mobo.
If you've retested your RAM using Memtest and Prime95, then
I suspect the problem may be with your graphics card (eg bad
video memory or bad drivers.) Check that the passive Northbridge
heatsink is in good contact with the chip, too - there are reports
of some heatsinks having slightly curved bases - a new thermal pad
should sort that one out.
HTH
 
dgk said:
Got the error. It was that irql_not_less_that_or_equal. Here is MS on
the topic. I'll have to get more info the next time it happens. The
odd thing is, it happened at 4:45am. Nothing had happened on that
machine for hours.
Click to expand...

Usually these errors are due to RAM problems (bad RAM timings or faulty
RAM)..
 
I ran Prime95 and it failed right away with a rounding error. I
removed one 512 chip and ran Prime again and it failed. I switched
chips and so far Prime is running as happy as a clam. I still want to
move the apparently good chip to another slot just to confirm it is not
the slot but it is really looking like a bad chip now. Good news is it
is still under warranty.


Steve
 
Turns out both RAM chips are fine. They both tested OK in slot one.
Both failed in slot 2 and slot 3. I was really perplexed and finally
went into the BIOS advanced chipset features and changed the Memory
Frequency setting from (SPD) to (AUTO). Prime95 has now been running
for 9 hours with no problem with RAM in slots 1 and 3. Who would have
figured? Thanks to the group for all the help and suggestions.

Steve
 
Turns out both RAM chips are fine. They both tested OK in slot one.
Both failed in slot 2 and slot 3. I was really perplexed and finally
went into the BIOS advanced chipset features and changed the Memory
Frequency setting from (SPD) to (AUTO). Prime95 has now been running
for 9 hours with no problem with RAM in slots 1 and 3. Who would have
figured? Thanks to the group for all the help and suggestions.

Steve
Click to expand...

That's exotic. When I set up my machine I spent mucho time tweaking
the memory. I think I'll drop it down to Auto for a bit and see if it
helps with the rebooting. Actually, it has only rebooted twice in the
week or two since I moved it to a new case and PSU.
 
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