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Thread ID: 57244 2005-04-27 11:48:00 Random Restarts and freezes Took-e (7692) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
349396 2005-04-27 11:48:00 Hi,
I recently upgraded my computer because, two things, my motherboard died, and my computer used to randomly restart, freeze and run unusally slowly at times. But after doing the upgrade, it's still restarting randomly and freezing quite often. The only things I didn't upgrade was my power supply, harddrive, and dvd-rom so I figured it had to be something to do with one of those. I have formatted the harddrive many times now (must be over 20 by now) so I don't think it's a software problem. Just tonight my power supply died on me.

Basicly what I want to know is if power supplies can cause random restarts, and usual freezes.

This is my computer now if anyone needs to know anything else:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum
1 gb Dual Channel Ram
ATI 9800se Graphics card
400w cheap power supply - just died
40gb seagate HD
ASUS 16x DVD rom
Windows XP home sp1

(the top three things are brand new so I don't think the problem has anything to do with CPU overheating)
Took-e (7692)
349397 2005-04-27 12:06:00 yep. seen quite a lot of them cause restats, crashes and freezes. some of these cheap PSU's are not worth the plactic bag they come in. tweak'e (69)
349398 2005-04-27 12:16:00 Yup, PSU is the most likely candidate.

However, you may have been unlucky and purchased a dud component when you upgraded. What brand of RAM did you buy? Were the parts new or second hand?

When the computer does wrong, does it display anything, any errors, any visual cues as to what happened?
Aurealis_ (7897)
349399 2005-04-27 15:39:00 What sort of cooling have you got? Over heating can cause those symptoms as well .

Is XP set to reboot without returning an error message (or BSOD)? Check in Control Panel > System > Advanced tab, Startup and Recovery button > uncheck "Automatically restart" or some such (win2k, which I use, is probably a bit diff to XP) . Next time things get a bit wobbley, you should get an error message .
Murray P (44)
349400 2005-04-27 15:45:00 Well you need a new PSU anyway, my PC is very similar to yours, I put in an Enermax noisetaker. They are not cheap, they weigh a ton, but are very quiet. Rob99 (151)
349401 2005-04-27 20:29:00 Yup, PSU is the most likely candidate.

However, you may have been unlucky and purchased a dud component when you upgraded. What brand of RAM did you buy? Were the parts new or second hand?

When the computer does wrong, does it display anything, any errors, any visual cues as to what happened?


All my parts were brand new, and my brand of RAM is twinmos. No clues to what is happening when it crashes...it..just..crashes.
Took-e (7692)
349402 2005-04-27 20:35:00 What sort of cooling have you got? Over heating can cause those symptoms as well .

Is XP set to reboot without returning an error message (or BSOD)? Check in Control Panel > System > Advanced tab, Startup and Recovery button > uncheck "Automatically restart" or some such (win2k, which I use, is probably a bit diff to XP) . Next time things get a bit wobbley, you should get an error message .

I ruled overheating out as a problem because I had lots of temperature monitoring software running, and all the temperature were pretty average, like 40deg C for the cpu etc . I can't check about about that xp reboot thing cause
i have no power supply for that computer at the moment( using my laptop for doing this for the mean time) .
Took-e (7692)
349403 2005-04-27 20:37:00 Well you need a new PSU anyway, my PC is very similar to yours, I put in an Enermax noisetaker. They are not cheap, they weigh a ton, but are very quiet.

Yes I was planning to get an Enermax, EG425P-VE SFMA, Dual Fan, 420W ATX PSU, from ascent. I here good things about Enermax so I decided to get the cheapest one they had.
Took-e (7692)
349404 2005-04-27 20:52:00 This is a handy gadget:

www.overclockers.co.nz

I had a lady with the same symptom - reboots, suspected her PSU and used that and it was faulty on the 12v.

(It tells you in general, faults, not specifically) But its quite useful for confirmation.
pctek (84)
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