need help.. geek advice.. or ideas? posures?

If i am posting this in the wrong area.. I apologize in advance..

I have a problem with my PC.. and hopefully someone else has ideas? Or has anyone faced this prob before?

My problem started a month ago.....

I would be on the PC , doing nothing odd.. and it would just shut itself down.. you know.. screen would come up.. "windows is logging off now"

on a few occasions.. it would try and reboot itself up..... ok at first was just annoying.. then it became more frequent...
I asked a "geek" friend.. who said possibly the "power" switch.. or the power supply... or then it could go from there
I took it into the shop... they said "we had it on for 24 hours and nothing happened" so sent it back home to me.
first hour online.. it did it again (yes mainly when i am in SL, but it also does it when i am not) example.. it just did it 2 times while trying to write this in forums. So called the shop.. took it back..... they suggested possibly i needed more Ram.. was overloading memory.. ok.. I could use more RAM yeehaw So we upgraded.. restored system.. etc.. back home... excited.. OK.. it ran well for a day! then the same old problem started
dang thing shutting itself down! Ok, back on the phone.. called the shop... they said well.. that game your playing might just be zapping to much resources, and possibly nothing can be done... "heavy sigh" So I fight with it a couple more days (let me note to you, its very sporatic, somedays happens only once.. others like 10 times) One day I wake up and try to get on.. and black screen.. with one line stating "error the NTLDR is missing" (and some tech stuff) and could not bypass at all.... ok.. call shop.. they say try restoring.. I did.. would not read cd... call them back.. ok.. bring it down... sounds like you fried your hard drive (90% chance) or the motherboard.......
I take it back.... they say its the hard drive .. so will have to replace it.. Ok.. lets get it done.. (trust me do NOT get me started on this issue
but to fill you in... I had a 200 gig hard drive and now have a 80 gig)...

they call.. say its ready.. ok.. i go in on Saturday to pick it up..... at first boot up its running fine.. yeah.. had to load again all my essentials.. lol (sl being first always) its running fine... then Sunday it started doing weird stuff..... things dissappearing out of my programs?
and a few other items..... then Monday morning.. go to start pc.. and it won't boot again! the error was a windows file is missing (system32)
and some other stuff.... SO I call again..... they say thats odd.. and bring it down again. Well come to find out they had a intern install the hard drive (and yes they were supposed to copy files from my old one.. but never did) and this intern (they were unsure what he did) did it wrong.. so had to reformat, install drivers etc again.. they said ok.. its fixed.
That was last Thursday i got it back.. and its been running fine until yesterday (Sunday) it does it again.. twice, and this morning.. it has done it 5 times.. twice when I am in SL and 3 times just writing......... please oh please... does anyone have any ideas? suggestions?

No they never did check out power supply or power switch.. or the fan.. i don't think
my specs are...

Gateway 550GR with a Intel pentium 4
ATI Radeon X300SE graphics
1024 MB ram
80 gig hardrive (was 200)

Thanks again in advance for any help.... questions answered if i can (and I apologize for bad typing and grammar)

*hugs* Cryene

does it pop up a window with a countdown, and a red circle icon with an X in it?

No.. it doesn't .. it just goes straight into the blue screen with windows.. saing "logging off windows now" and shuts down

No.. it doesn't .. it just goes straight into the blue screen with windows.. saying "logging off windows now" and shuts down

I believe there might be a new version of the blaster worm out there... I turned off my firewall for like, 1 second to test something, and *boom*, computer started rebooting... it did it whether I booted into safemode or not, and didn't give me a countdown except *once*, and that's what gave me my hint. Bad thing was, it wouldn't stay up long enough to disable the stuff I needed to disable, so I had to do a whole format/reload thing.

Best solution? Install Linux.

Now that I've got that out of my system, couple questions:

Were/are you running a firewall?
Virus scanner?
NOT Norton?
Do you live in an area with lots of power fluxuations?
Are you advanced enough to open the computer and looks at the components? If so, can you look and see if any of the 'battery' looking things are popped out on the top and/or leaking?
How long has it been since it was dusted from the inside out?
When you upgraded the ram, did you remove the OLD ram?
Have you tried replacing the power supply?

That's all the simple stuff I can think of right now. I always go with process of elimination, always with the simplest stuff first. Something like 80% of the time, it's something simple

Good luck!

BTW I appreciate the ideas and suggestions.. Thanks so much!!

Were/are you running a firewall?
Yes, at min. setting however
Virus scanner?
Yes.. was using Norton until about 2 months ago, then put on PC-illin (sp) by trend?
was recomended by the local "geek squad"
NOT Norton?
Do you live in an area with lots of power fluxuations?
Have not had any power Flux's or surges....

Are you advanced enough to open the computer and looks at the components? If so, can you look and see if any of the 'battery' looking things are popped out on the top and/or leaking?
yes.. sorta? have opened and looked.. to see if I could see anything amiss but would hope they would also look when it was at the shop?

How long has it been since it was dusted from the inside out?
actually fully dusted 2 weeks ago.... prior to that had been about 6 weeks

When you upgraded the ram, did you remove the OLD ram?
They installed it down at the shop...... not sure if they removed old ram or not.. better ask huh?

Have you tried replacing the power supply?
No.. have not... was going to be my next venture... that or try bypassing the power switch.. doh.. what am i saying

Good luck![/QUOTE]

Thanks ..

(forgive me ahead of time for spelling mistakes... a horrible sinus thing just hit me and I'm feeling to lazy to run this through a spell-check...)

Hmm... Pc-cillin is a good thing

You said you did a system restore, right? And that didn't include norton being re-installed, I hope? If so, you could still have remanents causing problems with your computer... but it would all be problems not at all related to what you're having, so... eer... just ignore that last part (though it might cause PC-Cillin to not work correctly, and maybe not protect like it should... but again I digress...)

Now, just because you don't have power outages doesn't mean you don't have dirty power. Friend of mine has went through *3* computers in less than 2 years because he refused to listen when I said 'GET A UPS', with the responce of 'but I have a surge protector, and hardly ever have power outages!'... all three of the computers' motherbaords had blown/leaking capasitors all over them when I checked. So if you don't have a UPS, I'd suggest getting one. If you DO... another thing eliminated

As far as people not checking the MB for blown parts... a different friend gave me his computer, which wouldn't turn on, with the thought I might be able to canibalize it. He said it just 'stopped turning on' one day, and the place he took it to couldn't find anything wrong with it. Well... the power supply was *melted* to the motherboard! All the components had a strange brownish substance on it, which could have been acid from the capasitors blowing from whatever caused the power supply to melt to the MB or, judging by the smell, cat pee.

So, at this point I'm thinking RAM (which can cause HD corruption, and random shut downs, and lockups, among other things), power supply, MB, or Yes. Usually, at this point I'd start removing/replacing other compontents of the computer, one by one, and see where it starts running stable... but unless you're feeling really brave...

So, yah... I'd start by asking the guys if they upgraded your RAM by completely replacing it all, or just added in more in addition to what you already have... and go from there.

I would say that RAM is the most likely culprit at this point as well.

There is a free program to test your RAM available online, It is called "memtest 86+".

Do a search for it on google.

You will need to burn it to a CD from its original file (it is an ISO image). I usually use Nero for this, but on the off chance you dont have a program to burn ISO images, there is a good free one: "CDBurnerXP Pro 3".

On CDBurnerXP Pro 3, to burn an ISO image...

1. Start the Program (sorry I gotta put that there =)

2. Select the top option, of the three options it gives you.

3. when the file browser window opens (the main window), go to File, then select "Write Disc from ISO File..."

4. A window will pop up, there will be a blank box at the top (which is unusually grey), with a box that has a "..." in it. Select the "..." box, and locate where you downloaded memtest 86+ to. (note that it may have downloaded as an archive, if it cant find the file, extract the archive and try again).

5. When the ISO file is selected, click the box that says "Finialize Disc", then click "Write".

This should properly create the CD.

Now, memtest 86+ is a boot CD, which means that you must turn off your computer, then restart it with the CD already in the drive. Your computer should automatically run the program, and it will have alot of information on a blue screen, most of which will probably be greek to you.

What you are interested in here, is:

1. The complete pass percentage, which is located at the upper right corner of the screen.
When this reaches 100%, it is done with one cycle of the test (you only need to run 1 cycle, but I suggest letting it run 3 times through, which it will do automatically).

2. There will be a white ------ line at the bottom of the main area, underneath this, if you have any problems with your RAM, it will display, with bright red highlights. If you show problems, it is a good sign that you have a bad RAM stick (almost always 100% certain).

If it comes up with errors, and you have more than one stick of RAM, remove one stick (WITH THE POWER OFF AND UNPLUGGED, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!!!!11!!1!!one) and test each stick individually, until you discover the one that is causing the problem. Call the computer shop you took your computer to the first two times, (please tell me you didnt take it to the Geek Squad), and ask if they would be nice enough to help you get your warranty on your RAM covered (it should be under a lifetime warranty through the manufacturer). I would think that since the shop failed to find the problem twice, they would be happy to help, to save face.

--------------------------------------------------------

Also, someone above mentioned the possibility of a new version of the W32.BLASTER worm... I havent heard of this yet, but I dont really keep up-to-date on virus news. I would second the opinion to not use Norton under any circumstances. It is a resource hog, it misses alot of things, and its not free. I would recommend that you try AVG Free Edition, which as the name implies is free, and can be obtained from free.grisoft.com.

Now, if your problem is not corrected by the RAM... I have a couple of other ideas...


2. It may be that there is a motherboard malfunction. An easy way to check for these is to physically look at the board. Noticable problems are corrosion around the ICs (black chips), which will appear to be a runny brownish rusty stuff, or blown capacitors (the cylinders that stick out of the board, usually located near the processor, which is beneath the large black fan). Capacitors have an X on top of them from their manufacturing process, if the X appears to be buckled outwards, the capacitor is blown, and may be the cause of the problem. If you have a blown capacitor, and the goons at your repair shop have any electronics knowledge at all, they may be able to replace that capacitor, thus saving you the trouble of purchasing a new board, or waiting for warranty replacement, if it is still under warranty.

2. Maybe check the voltage coming from your electrical outlets in your home (or wherever the computer is located). I have heard of this happening before where the voltage on the wiring does not remain constant. You will probably need to get a professional electriction to do this test, I do not recommend doing this by yourself, since it can possibly be fatal. There is a device which most electronics supply stores (read: not RadioShack) will carry which I believe is called a "voltage rectifier", but I may be mistaken on that. If your voltage is at fault, pluggin this device between your wall outlet and the computer would correct the issue. I would do this only in the event that the two above options did not correct the issue.

Sorry to be so terribly long-winded. I hope these suggestions help with your problem.

Oh and random reboots are the bain of PC Technicians everywhere, so nothing really against those guys either, they are just doing their jobs. (unless they are the Geek Squad, in wich case, I weep for your computer.)

One more thing under no circumstances, should you ever open the power supply unit on your computer, this is the large metal box near the top back of your PC. Doing so may result in serious injury or death. You have been warned.

Sounds like a heat issue to me, or something software related. Bad hardware usually doesn't play that nicely.

Probably something either on your video card or CPU is overheating. And then some monitoring software is forcing an immediate system shutdown. A fan with a loose connection or a drop in the voltage to it, causing the fan to slow down and cpu to overheat could do it.

Since these are software reboots check your event viewer and see if there is anything in there. (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer) that Might explain the culprit, or at least provide a clue.

Bad memory in my experience would probably result in more consistant crashes and hangs, not sporratic software reboots.

But Do the memtest the previous poster mentioned when you get a chance. Its always good to do that on new sticks and make sure you didn't get screwed.

As for the bad hard drive, that might not have been bad but just gotten interrupted in the middle of a read/write and thus corrupted some data. But I cannot think of any possible way that a messed up hard drive is going to be telling windows to do a soft reboot.

Does you motherboard have thermal controls in the bios where you can take a look to see how hot it is getting after the next time it reboots, or maybe some motherboard software with monitoring & alarm capabilities (perhaps this is what is shutting down your computer)? Check to see if you can enable some logging.

Take a look at the Fans on your cpu and video card (if it has one) make sure they are spinning fine and freely (maybe even take a q-tip and clear off the dust),
Try opening up your case and have a small fan blow on the cpu/motherboard/vid card, see if that resolves the crashes.

But do some more research before spending more money.. It'd suck if all you needed was a $12 fan.

Best of luck.

In my experience, I dont recall seeing an overheating processor display a "Windows is shutting down" screen, before turning itself off.

Usually video cards, when they overheat, cause the screen to get very garbled, and then eiter A. Freeze, or B. Freeze, and then seem to have parts fade out piece-by-piece. So we can rule that out.

Oh and one more thing... Why do files keep coming up missing, if its an overheating processor?

Mmm... I DO think that the Windows of these days seems to be a lot nicer than the days of yore. For example, I've this old stick of 128mb RAM, that once long ago (read: like 4 years ago... so not THAT long ago, but aeons as far as computer time goes...) I had in my old Duron machine, which had started just randomly locking up or going *poof*. I replaced the RAM and it seemed to fix things (as in: the computer stopped doing its silly things, and is now being used as a server and hasn't been turned off or rebooted in like 6 months...), and I set the RAM aside and forgot about it. Well, last week I built a friend a 'new' machine out of another old system of mine - an Athlon on a socket A MB that had pc133 slots. I was reluctant to give up one of my 512 sticks even though I have no use for it right now, so after I was finished installing XP I replaced it with the older RAM I found lying around, that I couldn't remember at the time why I had it. Well, 5 minutes after I turned on the computer, I started getting random lockups, weird errors, or the computer would just go to the 'Windows is shutting down...' screen, and sometimes 'Windows is restarting...' without me doing anything. I put the 512 stick back in, everything was fine again, and has been since they took it home.

I also did some testing on yet *another* old machine of mine (yes.. I've got a LOT of the buggers... and I've even pawned half of them off on other people!). On the windows (win2k - I hate XP) side it would both shut down 'nicely' AND just randomly poof off, and on the Linux side it just randomly froze or turned off (with all the lights still on).

So what was the point of all this?

1. I AM MEMTEST! F34R M3!
2. Bad RAM MIGHT make the computer shut down 'nicely'... but so might overheating CPU... though I doubt that's the culpret.
3. Bad RAM still sounds like the most likely suspect, 'cause all the other symptoms sound as such.
4. Bad power (either from your wall or from the power supply) could also still be the culpret, since that can have some of the same side effects as bad RAM.
5. So could some sort of MSBlast-type worm-virus... thing.
6. Heck, something like a bad wireless card could be causing something. One of my wireless cards is notorious for eating power in computers and making them act wonky...
7. So it's all still a complete mystery! Huzzah! But you at least have some leads to test from

and last, but not least, my biggest reccomendation...

8. Install Linux! The Linux Alpha client for SL works better than the windows client in some ways, and I hear SL Windows works *great* under stuff like WINE, thought I've never tried it. Ubuntu and Kubuntu are said by some to be as easy to install/use as Windows. It also comes with all the tools you need to test your system, for free... though Linux takes a LOT of getting used to, esspecialy if there's no Linux-y person around to help you, or you can't spell, like me...

Apparently I hadn't gotten it out of my system yet, sorry..

You're perfectly correct. An overheating cpu or vid card wont shut down nicely, they'll make the system go Boom. Crash and Bubble Bubble Bubble, and then let the magic black smoke out.
But a threshold monitor like N-tune or AsusProbe will. That's why i suggest he should check his event log and look for a clue there.

As for the hard drive.. Who knows.. but he's replaced it and the memory already.. so I'm just proffering easy ways to help diagnose the problem accurately.

Maybe its not the CPU. Could be the motherboard. Or any of a dozen other things.

Yes he should run memtest. I never said he shouldn't. But there are other things to check as well.


I am not going to rule anything out, but I will heartily recommend more diagnosing the problem, and that's what I am trying to help him do.
See Spoony's list of culprits above 1-7 are all plausible.

I think though #8 shoud be: Or he could always install FreeBSD (pwning Linux 6days from sunday (couldn't resist Spoony))

Well, we don't know if the memory was *completely* replaced, just that they had it upgraded. So they might still have the old ram in there

Also, I agree with you on FreeBSD... I used it before Linux and LOVED it... it's just a bit harder to use than a lot of the 'beginner' type Linuxes, esspecially if you don't have someone around to help you... which is why I switched to Linux. After the HD with FreeBSD a friend had helped me set up died, I wasn't able to figure out how to install stuff and get everything working right, but was able to do so with Debian, so have become a Debian nut... the SO and I are in the process of creating an OpenBSD then FreeBSD box though, neither of us having ever successfully set up a *BSD, but both of us seasoned Linux users... we figure between the two of us, we can muddle through.