WinXP hangs or restarts

[bard]

My home computer is giving me fits lately. It either hangs up which requires a reset to recover from or restarts itself several times a day. I've had Norton on it from day one, scanned, updated, scanned again. It has never found anything wrong. Spybot found a few minor things but it didn't help either. I've removed all the temp internet files per some suggestions on Annoyances.org. I installed a CPU temp app to check for overheating and it all appears normal. IE is up to date, disk is defraged with Norton Systemworks, plenty of RAM and HDD space. What now? Power supply voltage? System is a P3 running WinXP, IE, etc.

[HiTechRedneck]

Is XP up2date?

[bard]

Yes. It's XP Home if that matters. I also hit it with Adaware on a regular basis and it does it whether I'm connected to the internet or not so it's not someone else causing me grief.

[bard]

Interesting. I pulled one of the Ram modules out last night and it hasn't locked up since. I guess I found the problem.

[DarkWolf]

While that sucks, it's good that it was something relatively cheap to replace :) My HTPC wouldn't install XP ... it'd get to copying the components at the first part of the install, and would error out. Did a google search of the error it was giving, and one of the suggestions was ram, so I took a stick out, and it worked flawlessly.

Ironically I put the stick back in after it was all installed... and it worked fine :confused: But I've since replaced them both with PC2100 (since they were PC100, and the board claims to only support PC133 - PC2100)

[bard]

[QUOTE=bard]Interesting. I pulled one of the Ram modules out last night and it hasn't locked up since. I guess I found the problem.[/QUOTE]


I knew it was too good to be true. 12 hours later and it will hardly make it through a boot up without crapping out.

[Sami]

[QUOTE=bard]I knew it was too good to be true. 12 hours later and it will hardly make it through a boot up without crapping out.[/QUOTE]

Check the memory with http://www.memtest86.com

[46Tbird]

Look at the application log.

It may be getting an exception error that instructs the PC to reboot. Are you ever standing over it when it does so? Does it give an error message at all?

[VetEtr]

I had that problem and I think it was related to the cheap Verto Geforce card I had in it. I'd suggest making sure that your video driver is the newest version. If that doesn't help try going into BIOS and load failsafe defaults.

[The Big Matt]

are you setup for a memory dump? Go into the system properties/advanced/startup and recovery

make sure it is setup to take a memory dump. When you get that let me know, maybe i can take a look at it and see what's wrong, or causing the fault.

Matt

[bard]

Thanks guys. I tried to run the memtest86 application the other day, but I couldn't figure out how to get it to run. What can I say, just like cars I know enough to be really dangerous ;)

No error messages what-so-ever when it dies. If it makes it through the boot up process, then the usual scenario is a screen lock up. If it dies during boot up it will be a crap shoot whether it hangs up or restarts. I printed out this thread and I will try to play with it later tonight but my parents are in town tonight so I probably won't be able to get to it until tomorrow or the next night.

Thanks!