Sudden reboot no warning

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Guest

Please I do hope someone can help!

Over the last few months my computer has taken upon itself to suddenly,
without warning reboot.There is no pattern, it can happen three, four times
in the space of an hour, then not for weeks.

I have Windows 2000, with SP4, Zone Alarm (firewall), AntiVir (virus
checker) and SpyBot/adAware. I use ASDL to access the internet

Any ideas - this is turning into a big and worrying problem for me.

Claire
 
Hi Claire,

Are all your cooling fans working, including the power supply fan?
Excess heat has occasionally caused this same problem.
 
They appear to be, at least i can hear the fan working. i am going to clean
out the back of the unit later in case it is simply dust or dirt (but the
unit is not very old anyway). Ichecked the event viewer and got this error
message:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000001e
(0xc0000005, 0xb9d0ac5e, 0x00000000, 0x000000f9). Microsoft Windows 2000
[v15.2195]. A dump was saved in: C:\WINNT\Minidump\Mini110704-02.dmp.

Nothing seems to be in conflict, although I do have a morthboard with
integrated sound and a seperate soundcard (which I use at present).

If I go and check the BIOS, what should I be loooking for to see that
nothing is overheating?

Claire
 
I have/had an absolutely identical problem to you - same error messages -
sometimes twice within an hour - sometimes not for a couple of weeks.

Like you I couldn't find anything in conflict, fans were working and filters
clear. Neither of these explanations seemed very likely to me anyway - why
would I get a conflict or overheating twice within an hour and then not for a
couple of weeks?

I had more or less given up on the problem because the frequent crashes were
very rare and it was hardly sanity threatening...

I decided to install another hard drive for back-up purposes. The compressed
disc image back-up only takes about 20 gigs of the 40 gig drive so as my C
drive was about 80% full I decided to move the page file on to the new drive.
While I was at it I increased the minimum size to one gig and the maximum to
two gigs.

Since doing less I haven't had a spontaneous re boot. I realise that I am
tempting providence in posting this and that the machine will probably reboot
10 seconds after I have clicked send...

I suppose it just could be something to do with increasing the maximum size
of the page file from 1.5 gigs to 2 although I admit it is difficult to see
why running out of page file would cause the error message we see/saw.

Anyway, hopefully this will give you something to try which may help to
overcome the feeling of helpless frustration.

David

clairy said:
They appear to be, at least i can hear the fan working. i am going to clean
out the back of the unit later in case it is simply dust or dirt (but the
unit is not very old anyway). Ichecked the event viewer and got this error
message:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000001e
(0xc0000005, 0xb9d0ac5e, 0x00000000, 0x000000f9). Microsoft Windows 2000
[v15.2195]. A dump was saved in: C:\WINNT\Minidump\Mini110704-02.dmp.

Nothing seems to be in conflict, although I do have a morthboard with
integrated sound and a seperate soundcard (which I use at present).

If I go and check the BIOS, what should I be loooking for to see that
nothing is overheating?

Claire
PA20Pilot said:
Hi Claire,

Are all your cooling fans working, including the power supply fan?
Excess heat has occasionally caused this same problem.
 
This sounds like the problem I am currently having. I had a major HD crash
and replaced it and have been installing all my software back on the
computer. Since then, I can be running various programs and Win2K Pro will
just reboot while I am in the middle of something. I installed AV as soon as
I could connect to the internet and get the updates. All updates are current
for my OS, my AV (norton IS and SW), and MS Office.

Can you tell me how to increase the pagefile? If I had step by step
instructions on how to do this, I'm hoping it might resolve my problem.
Thank you.

Dawn

DavidG said:
I have/had an absolutely identical problem to you - same error messages -
sometimes twice within an hour - sometimes not for a couple of weeks.

Like you I couldn't find anything in conflict, fans were working and filters
clear. Neither of these explanations seemed very likely to me anyway - why
would I get a conflict or overheating twice within an hour and then not for a
couple of weeks?

I had more or less given up on the problem because the frequent crashes were
very rare and it was hardly sanity threatening...

I decided to install another hard drive for back-up purposes. The compressed
disc image back-up only takes about 20 gigs of the 40 gig drive so as my C
drive was about 80% full I decided to move the page file on to the new drive.
While I was at it I increased the minimum size to one gig and the maximum to
two gigs.

Since doing less I haven't had a spontaneous re boot. I realise that I am
tempting providence in posting this and that the machine will probably reboot
10 seconds after I have clicked send...

I suppose it just could be something to do with increasing the maximum size
of the page file from 1.5 gigs to 2 although I admit it is difficult to see
why running out of page file would cause the error message we see/saw.

Anyway, hopefully this will give you something to try which may help to
overcome the feeling of helpless frustration.

David

clairy said:
They appear to be, at least i can hear the fan working. i am going to clean
out the back of the unit later in case it is simply dust or dirt (but the
unit is not very old anyway). Ichecked the event viewer and got this error
message:

The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000001e
(0xc0000005, 0xb9d0ac5e, 0x00000000, 0x000000f9). Microsoft Windows 2000
[v15.2195]. A dump was saved in: C:\WINNT\Minidump\Mini110704-02.dmp.

Nothing seems to be in conflict, although I do have a morthboard with
integrated sound and a seperate soundcard (which I use at present).

If I go and check the BIOS, what should I be loooking for to see that
nothing is overheating?

Claire
PA20Pilot said:
Hi Claire,

Are all your cooling fans working, including the power supply fan?
Excess heat has occasionally caused this same problem.
 
In Dawn Lee had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:
This sounds like the problem I am currently having. I had a major HD
crash and replaced it and have been installing all my software back
on the computer. Since then, I can be running various programs and
Win2K Pro will just reboot while I am in the middle of something. I
installed AV as soon as I could connect to the internet and get the
updates. All updates are current for my OS, my AV (norton IS and
SW), and MS Office.

Can you tell me how to increase the pagefile? If I had step by step
instructions on how to do this, I'm hoping it might resolve my
problem. Thank you.

Dawn


Good morning Dawn,

I don't think it will help your problem BUT...

WinKey + Pause Break
Advanced Tab
Performance Options
Virtual Memory (change)
192 to 384 is pretty common...

In your case, same place - advanced tab - startup and recovery options...
Disable automatic restart (that's right for 2k, yes???) and find the problem
and solve that via the error codes.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"At present I am, as you know, fairly busy, but I propose to devote my
declining years to the composition of a textbook which shall focus the
whole art of detection into one volume." - Sherlock Holmes
 
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