I'm going to try to type this without pulling out my hair. My Windows 2000 Pro system will randomly reboot at times. It's not so random actually. It will sometimes reboot when I'm juuuuuuust about to load a program into full screen DOS mode for instance. It will also sometimes reboot juuuuuust before a web page loads. Then at times it will reboot just before a video loads. Then it will seem to reboot for no reason without user input at all.

I've replaced the power supply with an Antec 350, put in a 2nd Antec smartfan, and replaced the cpu/heatsink with an Antec reference. It cooled the damn thing down, but heat wasn't causing the reboots. I replaced the video card from an ECS 64MB to an ATI 32MB Xpert 2000 Pro, and the same problem still exists.

Current system:
Athlon Thunderbird 1.4
256MB DDR Ram
Windows 2000 Pro
40 Gig HD with 13 Gigs free, 26 Gig HD with 4 Gigs free

I really don't have THAT many programs on the system to be causing such a cluster *%##% of problems.


What is causing this!
:furious: :furious: :furious: :furious: :furious: :furious: :furious: :furious:

what about reinstalling it???????????

There's an option in w2k to display an error message and stop rather than automatically reboot when it hit's problems.

I'd suggest you turn off the auto-reboot so that you can at least see what the error message is as this may give you some clues.

I'm now using xp but I think on w2k this is found under system properties - advanced - startup & recovery.

Could be your RESET switch, pull wire off

Tim_UK,

You're 2 for 2 answering my questions! I really appreciate it, thanks (again!)!! Where can I check out the system event log to possibly see what's been causing these reboots?

:hail:

Think it's under control panel - admin tools - event viewer.

I am having exactly the same trouble with a WINXP machine.

I hardley ever touch it, as I use it mostly just for my internet connection, which gets shared out to two other PCs.

a couple of times a day, I suddenly hear windows starting up after it has decided to reboot.

I have put the PC on a UPS, but it still does it.

I thought it might be the screensaver, so switched that off, and it still does it after it has been left alone for 2 hours or more.

any ideas ?

Seems to be a common problem, my XP pro does it as well. It seems to be when I have a cd in one of my drives. It occurs very randomly and seems to go for a while without doing it & all of a sudden will happen 3 or 4 times in a session. For some reason I've gone about 10 days now trouble free but I havn't a clue what causes it.

It sounds like it may be a power problem. How powerfull is your power supply?

Has everybody got all the updates and done virus scans?


Roger

I replaced the power supply and put in an Antec 350W, another Antec smartfan case fan, and an Antec reference CPU cooler. Virus scans have turned up nothing. I think I got the problem. Under Wink2k startup and recover, I had it display an error message instead of rebooting instantly. Every single time I get this random reboot it will say "Driver IRQL not less or equal - SISGRP.SYS"

That SISGRP.SYS file is a video card file. I'm going to uninstall those drivers and see if that'll fix it.

Thanks guys!

Make sure you check the obvious and simple things. I once had a computer kept randomly rebooting-turned out that the pegs under the motherboard weren't in place properly-the motherboard kept touching the metal case and shorting out/cutting out, leading to frequent reboots! Make sure the motherboard is insulated from the case!