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Thread ID: 47471 2004-07-27 09:32:00 Weird restart problem... Growly (6) Press F1
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255777 2004-07-27 09:32:00 Hello there,

My friend has a slight problem, unfortunately he does not have internet access so I must be his liason.

A while ago, (if you recall) his games would randomly freeze or restart. Often giving a "minidump" error. This kept happening, but only in games. The situation was very awkward. He had recently upgraded his motherboard, (he bought it from me, 2nd hand, straight back fromt he manufacturer), and I thought that his RAM may be conflicting with the BIOS. So he bought a new stick of RAM, certified by the manufacturer, and all his problems were solved.

Then, two days ago, he was attacked by a virus, which I believe raided his boot sector, and was forced to reinstall. So he reinstalls. He then has no problems at all - untill he tried to install Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3.

Playing the game freezes his computer - baffling. He tried to reinstall directx 9.0b from his UT2004 CDs, and as soon as he did so, his games started crashing. Nor Combat Flight Sim 3, nor Battlefield 1942, nor UT2004 work- they all freeze or restart the computer.

I told him to run system restore and reset the computer back to the settings after the reinstall of windows - and it fixed the problem. Sure, he still couldn't play Combat Flight Sim, but he could play UT2004.

Then he turned off his computer, waited for 45 minutes and turned it on again. He went to play Mechwarrior 4, and it froze. He restarted the computer. He could no longer play UT2004 (same problem as before).

Then I told him to turn the "Automatically Restart" function off, and to change the error location (I recall minidump, the default, causing problems).

This fixed his ability to play UT2004. He then played Mechwarrior 4 again, and it froze, and he could no longer play UT2004, again.

Very, very frustrating. Short of sending everything back under separate warranties, what is there that can be done? What is the problem?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

PLEASE!!!!
Growly (6)
255778 2004-07-27 09:37:00 He has just run system restore again, and it has had no effect.

WHAT IS GOING ON?!
Growly (6)
255779 2004-07-28 07:33:00 Anyone? Growly (6)
255780 2004-07-28 08:45:00 "games would randomly freeze or restart"...

After you turned off the auto restart, what error messages did you get on a restart?

I appreciate you will not get them on a "freeze", but as you were getting restarts as well, they should now result in a meaningful error message on the BSOD.
godfather (25)
255781 2004-07-28 09:23:00 latest video drivers will help drcspy (146)
255782 2004-07-28 09:23:00 > "games would randomly freeze or restart"...
>
> After you turned off the auto restart, what error
> messages did you get on a restart?
>
> I appreciate you will not get them on a "freeze", but
> as you were getting restarts as well, they should now
> result in a meaningful error message on the BSOD.

I agree once more. You will normally get a stop error and a file name like xxxxxxx.sys. There will also be a stop code.

With WinXP you can get a useful BSOD which will allow you to find a problem.

You can also have a look at the system event manager logs which may help as well.
Elephant (599)
255783 2004-07-29 11:53:00 That's the thing, there is no blue screen. Complete system freeze. Sometimes it restarts.

And yes, i have double, triple and quadruple checked that I turned the restart on errors off.

As I said, last time the BSOD did come up, and it pointed me to a memory read error in minidump.sys

Didn't get that error after the RAM was changed, but i turned off the mindump thing, i set it to full error writing.
Growly (6)
255784 2004-07-29 11:53:00 Oh and yeah, he has the latest official Video Driver release. Growly (6)
255785 2004-07-30 11:45:00 Shoobadawabidam boo wap bump. Growly (6)
255786 2004-07-30 11:58:00 after upgrading to the latest video drivers a while ago, my computer refused to run anything in 'DOS'. Try old drivers, perhaps? agent_24 (4330)
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