Hanging and reboots with no events recorded

  • Thread starter Thread starter smlunatick
  • Start date Start date
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smlunatick

I have a PC that is hanging and rebooting several time by itself. I
have looked in the Event Viewer and find no cause. I have check the
system for possible virus and spyware infestation. Before I start
swapping hardware, is there some other checks I can do to see what is
the cause?
 
smlunatick said:
I have a PC that is hanging and rebooting several time by itself. I
have looked in the Event Viewer and find no cause. I have check the
system for possible virus and spyware infestation. Before I start
swapping hardware, is there some other checks I can do to see what is
the cause?
Click to expand...

In System control panel, Advanced tab, in Startup and Recovery is
an "Automatically Restart" box. Untick that, so that the
computer blue screen will stay around long enough for
you to record any setting.

If the computer reboots, without a nice blue screen, then you
know that the software is not getting a chance to do anything,
and the problem is hardware.

In terms of things to look for, open the PC and check for
leaking or bulging caps on the motherboard, near the
processor. Similar things can happen to the power
supply (I had an Antec with leaking caps inside).
I could hear an arcing sound coming from the Antec supply,
so I knew something was wrong with it. Some computers
are known for their bad cap problems, and there
is a veritable epidemic for those. Search using the
PC make and model, to see if that is an issue.

Paul
 
I have a PC that is hanging and rebooting several time by itself. I
have looked in the Event Viewer and find no cause. I have check the
system for possible virus and spyware infestation. Before I start
swapping hardware, is there some other checks I can do to see what is
the cause?
Click to expand...

Power Supply Units are nowadays very cheap and have a
correspondingly high failure rate (probably greater than 10 per cent.)
Most old-fashioned specialist computer stores can test your
PSU free in less than five minutes. Take in the whole PC (case
only) because a new PSU can be installed in 2 min. if needed.
 
Look at the DrWatson log file for a dump at the time of failure. Use Help to
learn how to use the file. Do a scan of the system for *.dmp files at the
time of the failure. They will give driver files that failed or system
failure codes.
 
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