Remember that FFXI PC I won?

[Erza]

SE gave you this comp? For what?
Forgive my ignorance, I just do not remember the original thread about you winning it.

let the devs bukkake him

[Kiro]

SE gave you this comp? For what?
Forgive my ignorance, I just do not remember the original thread about you winning it.

Some contest at one of those FFXI meeting ANIME-CON SUPER 2000 things.

[SephYuyX]

He won the video contest wasnt it?

[Hyjynx]

If you are getting the BSoD restarts (Blue Screen of Death.) something along the lines of:
http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/b/bsod2.gif

Then the error message when you restart says something along the lines of:
"Windows has just recovered from a serious problem"

Then it's most probably heat, faulty ram, or some other piece of hardware causing the issue.

1)Put 1 stick of ram in your first ram slot and let your computer run some ap like photoshop in windows or run memtest on each stick of ram.
2) When your computer crashes on you, immediately boot into your bios and check your temps (if you dont have some sort of utility to check from windows), hopefully it wouldnt have lost too much heat in the restart.
This is a broad generalization but usually
30-45 degrees celsius = golden
45-55 degrees celsius = a bit hot but shouldnt really cause problems
55-65 degrees celsius = very hot and you need to find a cooling solution asap
65+ degrees celsius = dont turn your computer on lol.

RAM is more sensitive to heat than other things, so imo you should work on cooling it off if it's pushing 55 degrees celsius.





You cant really generalize pc issues like this but this has been the situation in my experience.

Otherwise:
I'd say do a full uninstall of all your drivers (make sure you didnt trash the disks like so many people I have to deal with */slaps* or just download the most recent drivers for your hardware from the respective manufacturers.)

Once all the drivers are uninstalled, reboot, let your computer do its thing and tell you it found new hardware ect... ignore it and let it run for a couple of hours to see if you run into that problem. If it doesnt happen, you know right away that it was your drivers. If it does, you know that it's something else.


If you didnt have that problem with no drivers installed, start re-installing them one by one, leaving your computer on and running for 30-45mins (or what ever time it took for you to see that problem) after each install. Until you run into that problem. The hope here is that if it was a driver, the re-install should fix the problem, and you hopefully you dont run into it again but if you do, you'll be able to identify which driver is causing the problem.

[Rocl]

He won the video contest wasnt it?

Pretty sure he won it via lottery

[Totien]

Well, it hasn't happened today at all. But it comes and goes. To answer a few questions, lol@anyone thinking it's a heat issue, it's not a BSoD error, I use Windows Media Player, I won it in a raffle at a SE event in College Station, TX after BGs very own Tonkonowhateverthefuck and I just had a conversation over who could use the PC more. He had more valid reasons, I won the PC. I thought it was hilarious. Anywho.

I booted into BIOS and tried to find a solution that way, but to be honest, I have no idea what the hell I was looking at, so I booted normally and it's worked fine all evening. I'm pretty much in agreement with Sonomaa as I've asked a few of my friends who know a bit more about PCs than me, and most of them gave me the same answer. Forgot to ask about any recommendations for a new motherboard though, any suggestions?

[Carbon]

I had the "random reboot" problem back when I first started FFXI. It was so bad, actually, that I had to TELL people when I partied with them that I might blink out once or twice... (never stopped them, though, because I was RDM lol) Found out it was my ram. I ran the memtest.iso and it locked up in the test, every time. Replaced all of my ram and whammo! Never again rebooted. It always and almost only happened when I was running a program (not just browsing the internet, listening to music, etc.)

It's actually better to run memory diagnostics on 1 memory stick at a time. Takes more time as need to shutdown and change them in between each test, but at least you know exactly wich one is defect and can replace only that one. Also helps save time to the guy at the computer store

I was only running off of one stick of 1.0 GB of ram, I didn't have more than one.

As for Totien, what I did, I put the memtest.iso onto a CD and then when I went into BIOS, all you have to do is change the booting order, so that it boots from the CD, rather than the harddrive. That will run the test right away.

[Hyjynx]

lol@anyone thinking it's a heat issue

Why is it something to lol@? People were just trying to help. You didnt provide much info lol.

If its just a random restart you could try this.

Start menu > Control Panel >Click the "System" icon > click the "Advanced" Tab > and click the "Settings" button in the "Start up and Recovery" section and uncheck "auto-restart" if its checked.

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7...tartco6.th.jpg

[Totien]

Hmm. For some reason I thought I'd said in my OP specifically that it wasn't a heat issue, but upon review, I guess I didn't. It's not a heat issue. 6' fan on the back of the unit, duct pulling air directly to the CPU, breathable faceplate, plus the fan I added. It's ice cold in there.

Ok so I did what you suggested, automatically restart was selected. I'm still curious though as to what would cause the system failure in the first place.

[aurik]

Hmm. For some reason I thought I'd said in my OP specifically that it wasn't a heat issue, but upon review, I guess I didn't. It's not a heat issue. 6' fan on the back of the unit, duct pulling air directly to the CPU, breathable faceplate, plus the fan I added. It's ice cold in there.

Ok so I did what you suggested, automatically restart was selected. I'm still curious though as to what would cause the system failure in the first place.

PS2 limitations.

[Carbon]

Hmm. For some reason I thought I'd said in my OP specifically that it wasn't a heat issue, but upon review, I guess I didn't. It's not a heat issue. 6' fan on the back of the unit, duct pulling air directly to the CPU, breathable faceplate, plus the fan I added. It's ice cold in there.

Ok so I did what you suggested, automatically restart was selected. I'm still curious though as to what would cause the system failure in the first place.

PS2 limitations.

I lol'ed really good IRL.

[Zigma]

remove the 4 gigs of ram that you have (lol winxp's limit is 2gb anyway) and run it with a stick of 1 gig. See if that solves your problem.

[levish]

try
running with 1 stick of ram and that memtest program mentioned
and updating the via all-in-one drivers since you mentioned it's a via chipset

[Plow]

try reinstalling WoW...

seriously...

wow fucks itself up hardcore during installs and updates all the damn time it's really annoying

[Hyjynx]

I'm still curious though as to what would cause the system failure in the first place.

Could be any number of things >_>;
If you think you have a shitty mobo, that could very well be the problem.

The first thing I'd actually do is check: Control Panel > Administravite Tools > Event viewer.
See if there are any errors occuring. If so, googling what ever the message is might give you some insight.

Otherwise this is as good as any place to start:

try
running with 1 stick of ram and that memtest program mentioned
and updating the via all-in-one drivers since you mentioned it's a via chipset

[Khamsin]

If all else fails, call SE's tech support about the problem with the computer they gave you, tell them it randomly restarts while playing WoW, and let them help you.

[vahnn]

Its not just WoW. this does this to me also and i hand built my computer.
I dont run SP2 cause i personally dont like it. when i had it it made the problem worse IMO.

Whenever i am playing a game FFXI freespace II FEAR or anything to taht effect sometime my computer randomly restarts. I am running an AMD 64 with nvidia chip set on the ABIT mother board and a , BFG Tech Geforce 7600GS 512MB GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card. I run on 2 512meg DDR ram strips. Both strips have those heat spreaders on it. Plenty of fans are in my case as well.

happens sometimes like was stated 2-3 times or dosent happen at all for days at a time. I listen to music, do ventrilo. Play FFXi and all that stuff.

Thank you all for the advice as i will defo look into this and see if i can get it fixed. Cause it seems to happen always in times when im like in the middle of doing something important on FFXI. lolimportant.

BTW if you have never played Freespace and like flight sims go find the .iso its damn near the best flight space sim out there.