Rebooting for no apparent reason - day 2

Yesterday morning, (about 5:30 a.m.) the comp shut itself down and rebooted for no apparent reason. It killed my WooHoo! almost 6 million! points - and still going! game of TextTwist and left me sitting here going Hunh? What the hell was that about??

No warning. No message. Nothing. Just blip, and the Windows start-up screen appears.

So, I'm thinking (which in itself can be dangerous) - maybe it's the automatic Windows updater, which is set for 5 a.m. on Fridays. A little odd, since there was no 'Windows must restart to complete the install' message and it hadn't happened before, but still a semi-plausible possibility.

Everything seemed to be running fine after the restart, no problems throughout the day or evening. Last night, I disabled the automatic updates and opened the TextTwist game again, played just a couple of rounds and left it open as a "check" to see if it happened again overnight. The game was still there this morning, so there were no restarts during that time.

Then, this morning, (about 6:30 a.m.) I'm wandering around DU, and have a couple of other tabs open - checking the local news - when, of a sudden - blip! and it rebooted again. A little over 25 hours later, so it's probably not an every 24 hour thing.

I checked the Scheduled Tasks, and there's nothing listed, so ruled that out.

Waiting for the antivirus scan to finish right now, hoping it's not a bug of some sort - Then I'll run the Crap Cleaner. Is there anything else I should fire up or check?

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A bit of background for what it's worth:

HP Pavillion (about what - 5? years old? - Can't remember which year's Christmas)
Windows XP
Hard drive and anemic cooling fans replaced a couple of years ago after a complete :( crash and burn
recently upgraded the RAM (was 128 - added a 256) and cleaned everything then, so it shouldn't be an overheating due to dust bunny thing (but then again with 3 dogs and 3 cats in constant attendance - who am I to say?)

don't know what other info would be needed for this particular problem... but will gladly supply it if I can.


...Still waiting for the scan to finish... up to 79% - no detections so far...

...Finally:

End of the scan: Saturday, June 17, 2006 08:17
Used time: 46:15 min

The scan has been done completely.

2823 Scanning directories
162573 Files were scanned
0 viruses and/or unwanted programs was found
0 files were deleted
0 files were repaired
0 files were moved to quarantine
0 files were renamed
6652 Archives were scanned
29 Warnings
0 Notes

The 29 warnings were for files that could not be opened or could not be read for some reason or other. Is that important? If it is, I can post the list here.

*sigh*, it's always something.

thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

could be power supply failing. Most of the prebuilt systems have power supplies barely big enough to handle the system. Try blowing out the power supply and inside with air, If the CMOS has a PC Health status, when it suddenly reboots check to see what the CPU temp is.

Sorry it took awhile to get back to you.

Sounds like I need to do some 'housecleaning' when the sun comes up and I get some good light in here. Cleaned the fans and inside the case a few weeks ago when I added the 256 memory stick - it was nasty in there.

Could I possibly need a new power supply? Cleaning, I can do. A new power supply would bring up the question of how much to spend on this thing to keep it running.

Kind of embarrassed here - I don't understand what you mean when you say:
"If the CMOS has a PC Health status, when it suddenly reboots check to see what the CPU temp is."

I looked up CMOS at the Webopedia - Way over my head - no clue - and if it has a PC Health status, I wouldn't know where to begin to find it to check the temp.

One thing I did do was uncheck the box for 'automatically restart on error' in the System Startup and Recovery settings to see if there were any accompanying error messages in case it did a shutdown again. Sure enough - It did and there was.

Had another shutdown just a few minutes ago. The comp froze on the blue screen and gave me enough time to take notes. I'm posting the notes I took from the error message separately below. Hoping you'd be kind enough to check it out and see if it makes any sense to you since you speak the language. Does it sound like it could be a power supply problem?

Thanks again for your response. So glad there's people like you who understand these things and who are willing to help those of us who don't.

to open up the box and blow all the assorted fuzz out of it periodically, just in case it's causing components to overheat. You'd be surprised how much dust builds up in a fairly short time and it can cause overheating problems.

I would suspect the component at fault is the power supply, though. Sometimes just cleaning out the fan and blowing all the fuzz out of it will fix the problem, sometimes it just buys you more time. The good news is that power supplies are easy to replace and not too costly

Sounds like a classic heat problem to me.

The PS is the first thing I'd check, but also check your CPU fan and heat sink, first to make sure the fan is actually spinning, and second to see if a lot of dust has collected around the heat sink. Over time this can turn into a caked on mess as the particles heat and cool and gather moisture. It'll kill a CPU.

P.S. Never Dismiss the Absurd

Is it possible the reset button is getting hit by something, like an animal? I know it's a long shot, but that was the problem I found in the above story.

Thank you for sharing it. Hilarious.

Wish that was the problem, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get off that easily.

I'll take the thing apart after the sun comes up and check the fans and clean inside.

As I mentioned to hobbit709 above, my notes from the blue screen of death (something I thankfully haven't seen in a LOOOOONG time) are posted below for any comments and/or suggestions - if you have the time and the inclination.

Developing pattern seems to be shutdown and restart about 10 - 15 minutes after 'waking up' - then smooth sailing until after the next 'down' time.

If you haven't cleaned it out in 3 years then its real possible (with 3 cats and 3 dogs) and two years that its overheating because so much dust and hair has collected around the fans and on the board. Shut her down, open her up, clean her out first and try that. If its still shutting down then I'd suspect power supply as well.

JG

General concensus seems to be the possibility of dust, dander and pet hair accumulation. I did clean it out a few weeks ago when I added the new memory stick, but as filthy as it was, it wouldn't surprise me to learn I'd missed something.

It's not the only spot in the house with hidden pet hair and dust - I rolled the bigscreen tv out from the wall a week or so ago when the grandkids were having a problem getting the playstation to work (one of the wires was unplugged) and we found the motherlode. They said 'Whoa!' I said, 'Nobody moves until you take a vow to never disclose the location of my secret stash of dog hair. Someday this could be worth a lot of money - and we'll be rich I tell ya. Rich!' They just rolled their eyes at me.

Again, thank you for your response - and I'm posting the notes below that I took from the blue screen of death that popped up on the most recent shutdown. Guess the 'good news' at this point is - it hung up on the screen which allowed me enough time to take a few notes before physically shutting it down. Any comments/ suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Problem has been detected
Windows has shut down to prevent damage

Problem seems to be caused by the following file
i81xdnt5.dll
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

If first time, restart computer.
If it appears again, follow these steps:
check to see if new hardware / software properly installed
check for updates
If problem continues disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software.
Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing.

Technical Info:

***STOP: 0x00000050 (0xBCC00Po8, 0x00000000, 0xBF9F4273, 0x00000000)
*** i81xdnt5.dll address BF9F4273 base at BF9D4000

datestamp 41109697

Beginning dump of physical memory
physical memory dump complete.
contact sys admin or tech support group for further assistance.


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The latest hardware added would be the new memory stick - about a month or so ago.
Software would be when I downloaded the free trial version of Google sketchUp on 05/03/06. I downloaded it just to check it out and don't mind deleting it if that is the problem.

Thanks again to all of you for your responses.

Try downloading and running MEMTEST86

http://www.memtest86.com/

You can run it from a bootable floppy or CD drive.

Warning it takes quite a bit of time to carry out all the necessary passes so you may want to run it overnight.

On edit -

I would be a bit suspicious about the new memory stick.


Do you have an old one that could replace it temporarily just to check out your machine ?

Edit Again -

Do you have one 256 MB stick or did you upgrade by adding another 128MB (though I do not think these are still available) ? Sometimes there are compatibility problems when running two sticks on a machine that have slightly different specifications.

If your memory stick comes up clean I would then check out any other areas of pageable memory that reside on your machine. An obvious candidate would be a problem with an area on your hard disk drive that is is being used as pageable memory by Windows for a swap file

http://www.smartcomputing.com/techsupport/detail.aspx?guid=&ErrorID=21977

i81xdnt5.dll is a Display Driver

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/filedb/i81xdnt5.dll-7430.html

It might have got corrupted, though I do not think that is your problem.

Looking at some of the other forums where this fault has been discussed the possible causes are identified as

- Defective memory
- Multiple memory sticks of incompatible types
- Memory stick not compatible with motherboard

http://tinyurl.com/g5bmb

before - it did cause shut downs and all sorts of problems - even to the point that I allowed tech support (gateway) to talk me into erasing and reinstalling - later (probably here at DU! don't remember for sure) someone figured out it was the added memory I had installed ... shortly before the problem started...duh.

thanked everyone for their help and suggestions.

We're on an "If it isn't broke, it belongs to someone else" streak here. I haven't even made the time to take the first step and take the case off of the comp to clean the inside.

The good news is, for whatever reason it was shutting itself down (dust, dirt, pet hair, power source, cooling fans, memory stick, or co-conspirator in the appliance rebellion), after the third time (Sunday morning, when I got the error message), it hasn't done it again.

I'm beginning to suspect an out-of-warranty appliance conspiracy - First the computer, then the A/C, then the clothes dryer, then we noticed the tv is flickering, then the garbage disposal took its turn and froze.

*sigh*

Anyway, wanted to stop in and thank everyone for taking the time to offer assistance. I really appreciate it, and hope to find the time to at least take the suggestion of cleaning it out soon.

Thanks again :hi:

Could you possibly have a wiring problem in your house, or could you be experiencing brown-outs? I've seen this before. I lived in an apartment once that was always experiencing brown-outs due to bad wiring. The power didn't completely go out, and it was barely enough for me to notice except that it made the computer reboot due a sensitive PS.

The pattern of electrical gadgets going whacko on you is what makes me suggest this.