My PC with AMD3500+ and Radeon 9600, 1Gb RAM seemingly randomly reboots without warning. It restarts perfectly and gives no error messages after restarting.

I have checked the processor and video card temperatures and they are not over heating. It has happened 5 minutes after startup and also after 3 hours without problems. I have Norton and have run system checks and scan disc with no problems shown. I have Norton firewall and antivirus which also show no problems.

What can I check next?

Many thanks
David

Right click My Computer then click Properties then Advanced

Startup and Recovery > Settings > System Failure >

Uncheck: Automatically Restart

This will then freeze your computer on a blue error screen where you can note the error. Then you will need to manually power off.

Also:

Check your Event Viewer via Administrative Tools.

Open the System as well as Application tabs and look for red X errors that coincide with your problem. Details here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427




Also if your blue screen is showing a memory dump do the following:



Go to start | search (type in) .dmp
Note the location of your .dmp files.
If no .dmp files check for minidump.
Remember this location and the path that leads to it.

Then:

1) Download and install the

Debugging Tools from Microsoft

All you need do is download and install this. Make no attempt to start or run it.

2) Download and install this

debugwiz

This is a DOS based batch file that will command the above Microsoft Tools.

3) Open the Wiz & Browse to, or paste in the path to, your .dmp file.

4) After the Wiz creates a Text document attach it back to this thread.


If you are looking for links on how to interpret this data for yourself try here first:

http://www.wd-3.com/archive/registercontext.htm

Thank you jephree. I will run through that now and make a note when it next falls over. David

Jephree
I think I am looking towards a hardware problem.

Startup and Recovery was NOT set to automatically restart.

I checked the events but there were none after April 2006

I downloaded the debugging tools and debig wiz and looked at the minidump files. The most recent was 16 Jan 07 and only showed the headers. I have attached one from 8 Jan but I don't think it helps. It is clear that I am not getting a .dmp file every time it crashes as it crashes every day.

Any ideas gratefully received.
Many thanks
David

No dump isn't a good sign (hardware). You can also zip up the dump files and attach them to your next post. See below for bugcheck EA, it's usually a hardware problem.

0x000000EA: THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER
A device driver problem has caused the system to pause indefinitely (hang). Typically, this is caused by a display driver waiting for the video hardware to enter an idle state. This might indicate a hardware problem with the video adapter, or a faulty video driver.

Do you think I should try updating the video driver before buying a new video card?

Yes that would certainly be worth a try.

Uninstall your current driver before updating.

Sorry if anyone has posted this before but heres my solution. Go to the control panel click power options under the power schemes tab put system standby to never.