Asus p4c800E Deluxe occasional rebooting

  • Thread starter Thread starter Louise
  • Start date Start date
L

Louise

I did a "compromise" and instead of getting a new system from Dell, with
whom I've had a lot of bad dealings, I had one built for me by
www.endpcnoise.com aka NW Computers in Vancouver Washington.

It has an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard, a 3.2 cpu chip and 1024
Kingston memory (2 512 dimms). Ami bios 1014. Came with Windows XP Pro
installed, along with Office SBE installed. Both are OEM versions.

It seemed to run fine but as time has gone on, and I've begun loading
all my software, I'm having occasions of sudden rebooting which has
already corrupted an Outlook file which was open at the time of one of
the reboots.

Here's the scenario:

I use a cable modem for internet access and therefore, didn't get to try
out the modem until I installed WinFax Pro 10. It sent faxes fine. But
- when I received a fax, the modem made a strange noise and the system
rebooted. This happened 3 or 4 times.

I switched out the inexpensive modem it came with and replaced it with
my old US Robotics from my other system. It worked fine - faxes
received and no more reboots.

Today I installed my USB Palm and the newest software downloaded from
their website (actually it's a Visor Prism using the Palm 3.5 OS). It
synced ok. I installed a program I've used before which syncs with a
database. I synced again and everything was fine

I tried to sync again a while later and right in the middle, the system
rebooted. This happened twice. I've now plugged in the USB cable to
another port and synced a few times without a problem.....

I'm very disturbed because of the rebooting, which of course, will
corrupt data and since I do a lot of multi-tasking, leaves me very
vulnerable to data loss.

Even if a program showed some incompatibility, or a hardware connection
is bad, why does the entire system reboot? I could see if it hung - but
rebooting is kind of serious and leaves one very vulnerable.

Is there something I should check? Where do I begin?

TIA

Louise
 
Louise said:
I did a "compromise" and instead of getting a new system from Dell, with
whom I've had a lot of bad dealings, I had one built for me by
www.endpcnoise.com aka NW Computers in Vancouver Washington.

It has an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard, a 3.2 cpu chip and 1024
Kingston memory (2 512 dimms). Ami bios 1014. Came with Windows XP Pro
installed, along with Office SBE installed. Both are OEM versions.

It seemed to run fine but as time has gone on, and I've begun loading
all my software, I'm having occasions of sudden rebooting which has
already corrupted an Outlook file which was open at the time of one of
the reboots.

Here's the scenario:

I use a cable modem for internet access and therefore, didn't get to try
out the modem until I installed WinFax Pro 10. It sent faxes fine. But
- when I received a fax, the modem made a strange noise and the system
rebooted. This happened 3 or 4 times.

I switched out the inexpensive modem it came with and replaced it with
my old US Robotics from my other system. It worked fine - faxes
received and no more reboots.

Today I installed my USB Palm and the newest software downloaded from
their website (actually it's a Visor Prism using the Palm 3.5 OS). It
synced ok. I installed a program I've used before which syncs with a
database. I synced again and everything was fine

I tried to sync again a while later and right in the middle, the system
rebooted. This happened twice. I've now plugged in the USB cable to
another port and synced a few times without a problem.....

I'm very disturbed because of the rebooting, which of course, will
corrupt data and since I do a lot of multi-tasking, leaves me very
vulnerable to data loss.

Even if a program showed some incompatibility, or a hardware connection
is bad, why does the entire system reboot? I could see if it hung - but
rebooting is kind of serious and leaves one very vulnerable.

Is there something I should check? Where do I begin?

TIA

Louise
Click to expand...

Get a copy of memtest86+ from memtest.org (this is the maintained
version of memtest86 originating on memtest86.com). Get a blank
floppy and memtest86+ will prepare a bootable image on the floppy
(the floppy data cannot be read by Windows - there is no conventional
file system). Boot the computer with the floppy and let the test
run for multiple passes. There should not be any errors - any
errors will sooner or later crash the computer. (You can also select
the extended tests for more thorough test coverage.) There was
a problem with memtest86, where it would hang on a 875/865
motherboard - disable USB Legacy support in the BIOS if this
happens (only while using memtest86).

If the memory has errors, you have two choices. First, try to adjust
the memory timings manually, to eliminate the errors. If the
errors seen occur at the same locations every time the test is
run, chances are the memory is bad. If adjusting the timing won't
work, that also will mean the memory is bad.

The next step, is to get a copy of Prime95 and run the torture test.
This will heat up the CPU, so get a copy of motherboard monitor
(MBM5) so you can access the hardware monitor while Prime95 is
running. Prime95 should not have any "round off errors" or
other error types while it is running - if it does, this could
indicate a problem with the processor or Northbridge chip (you've
already tested the memory at this point, so it is less likely
to be the culprit).

HTH,
Paul
 
Maybe rebooting is caused by the retention module.

On this board the retention module sometimes flattens a solder joint
at the back side which causes a short circuit. That makes the board
reboot or actually prevents from booting.

just ask google[1] for further information

footnotes:
[1] http://www.google.at/search?q=p4c800+solder
 
I've got the same motherboard and BIOS version with Mushkin memory and have
experienced random reboots as well. It never seems to be the same thing I'm
doing so I'm baffled. I've had it reboot coming out of suspend mode among
other things. Sometimes there is something in the system logs and Microsoft
says it is a driver issue. I'm up to date so I don't know what the heck I
can do.

It is just a sneaking suspicion but I think this stuff resulted in my loss
of a stripe set. One disk just dropped out of it. I've since rebuilt in a
shadow configuration with no indications of a problem, yet. Another
sneaking suspicion is that the system seemed to become more unstable after I
applied a bunch of Microsoft updates.
 
Back
Top