[thechat] Annoying friggin' PC problem. Help?

[Madhu Menon]

Hello Experts. ;)

My PC is annoying the living crap out of me. I've got a Pentium III/933 +
256 MB + Asus CUSL2-M M/B. It runs Win2K Professional.

The problem: It spontaneously reboots.

I'll be doing something harmless like reading email or browsing the Web or
just playing a game. Suddenly, it does  a hardware reboot aka a cold boot.

The frequency varies. Yesterday morning, I had 6 reboots in the space of 40
minutes, or one every 8-10 minutes. I wasn't doing anything freaky, just
routine stuff like typing a letter, reading email, drawing something in
Xara, etc. A couple of days ago, I went 12 hours without rebooting.

Let me rule out possible causes.

a) It's not a software/OS problem. Programs don't crash. I've disabled the
"Automatic reboot on system failure" option in Win2K, so if a kernel error
happened, it would show a BSOD instead of rebooting. That never happens.

b) It's not a power problem. I've got an APC 500 UPS that constantly
supplies power through battery and never exposes my PC to mains power.

c) It's not the CPU or Motherboard overheating. All my system monitoring
utilities tell me that the temperatures are well within normal parameters.

d) It probably isn't the RAM. I checked and reseated them to make sure
there were no loose contacts.

e) Not a virus or Trojan horse. I have ZoneAlarm on high security, set my
IP Security to block all but required ports for email and WWW, and I update
my virus sigs every two days. Only the paranoid survive. :)


So what could it be? Have any of you faced this? I just wanted to try and
get an idea before I send it off to the shop for repair.

Possible complications:

a) About a month ago, my CPU fan stopped turning which caused reboots due
to CPU overheating. I got it repaired. The power supply was screwed and
they had to repair it. They also replaced the CPU fan. Could there be
residual heat damage to the CPU?

b) My CPU fan does seem to be a little noisier than it should be. It makes
the sound of, er, crickets (if you've heard that.)

c) When running the Prime95 (Google it) torture test for my CPU, my CPU
goes from about 20-22 deg. C to 58-60 deg. C in about 120 seconds. The
torture test subject the CPU to a continuous 100% load. This doesn't *seem*
normal. Is it? (CPUs are generally rated to survive up to 85-90 degrees, IIRC.)


Any help, ideas, and experiences appreciated. And yes, I did a Google check
before I posted here. Nothing conclusive turned up.

Regards,

Madhu

<<<   *   >>>
Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net