Hello. Does anyone else have this problem? Every now and then my computer all of a sudden just reboots itself, I’ll be in the middle of websurfing and other innocent stuff and the stupid computer will just shutdown and reboot. This is my computer here at home that does it. It also happened to someone at work, and he had just reformatted the computer with a new hard drive, the same thing happened to one of my computers at work, too. It had just been reformatted not that long ago, also. My computer at home is only a few months old, it’s an Anthlon K7, no other problems with it, and yet it just started this rebooting crap. There doesn’t seem to be any problems with it other then this rebooting thing. Does anyone else have the same problem? Do you know what I can do to make my system stop doing this? I hate loosing stuff when it does this.
Computers are very sensitive to power fluctuations. We had problems at work with computers that were hooked up to the same curcuit as a laser printer. When the laser printer goes from standby mode to print mode it draws a lot of power. The computers on the same circuit would sometimes lock up or reboot.
At home surge protectors guard your equipment against power spikes. But you need some kind of UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) to guard against power dips or brown-outs. At home are you running some appliance, washer/dryer/oven etc., that might be drawing a lot of power? If not, just because there’s no obvious cause doesn’t mean that’s not the problem.
Just wanted to give you a possibility. Good luck.
Thanks. That’s the only thing I can think of, I have been meaning to get a UPS for my computer for a while now. I guess that will stop my system from rebooting itself? My system doesn’t lock up, it just does that rebooting thing. Now, at work our computer are on UPS. So, maybe it’s not always the power situations? Hmmmmm…
tiglon1 makes a good point - Athlons are very sensitive to voltage fluctuations, esp. the faster ones (not really more so than the fastest Pentium 3’s tho, IIRC).
In fact, what tiglon1 said re: the laser printer incident I have seen happen with my own eyes - the same exact situation.
One thing you might try also is finding out what motherboard is in your PC, and downloading and flashing the BIOS to the latest version. MB BIOS’es get updated quite a bit nowadays.
Also, here is one thing - is it a “hard” reboot, like when the power goes off, then on - or is it a “soft” reboot, like when you hit the “Reset” button?
Mine does it too.
It completely shuts down, enough for the monitor to go into sleep mode, then reboots.
That’s funny. I have an old crappy computer and yet a power glitch enough to turn the TV off and make the lights blink very perceptibly will not make it reboot. It must have some bigass capacitors in the power supply.
Are you trying to overclock it? Most Althons will reboot when they crash because of overheating, which is a common result of overclocking without extra cooling. If it is a corporate build system then overheating shouldn’t be much of a problem, but make sure your fans are running properly.
How big is your power supply?
AMD recommends at a bare minimun you have a 250W power supply; realistically you’ll need a 300W supply. Adding a new hard drive might have been enough to push a marginal power supply over the edge in your coworker’s case.
Also, if you run Windows 2000, system failures (“blue screens of death”) will (by default) automatically reboot the system. You can turn this feature off in the System Properties window. (Right click “My computer” Properties > Advanced > Uncheck “Automatically reboot” in the System Failure section) System crashes are always logged by default, so you can open the Event Viewer (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer) and check under the System Log for your abnormal shutdowns.
Don’t know if this will help, but when our computer starting rebooting itself (rather randomly and without warning) it turned out that the power supply was on the fritz and needed replacing. But, this is – or was, I should say – an old computer, and I think the power supply was the last piece of hardware we replaced. (Now everything but the case is relatively new!)
If it only happens when your on the net, maybe someone is pinging you or trying to get into your system. When a packet is sent to you that is above 65500, it may cause your system to reboot. Get all the windows update files and service packs to update your security. Just a thought.
I had this happen with my new Pentium III 450 about a year ago. I was about to replace the power supply when I decided to swap the PCI slot placement between the internal modem and my video card. I have no idea why it worked but it never happened again. If you have the time, maybe this solution will work.
I would say heat. Get another fan. Its a hot time of the year. Or, if you have one of those board that have a temperature sensor, take a look at the temperature. You know its heat & not the power supply when it happens after the computer has been on for some time.
It could also be your OS if it’s a factory load. Hard to diagnose something like that. I had the problem until I got a new disk and re-loaded Windows.
Anyway, I would suggest to anyone to get a UPS! Especially if you live anywhere outside of downtown in a big city, and even then. Also, if your PC is more than a few months old, power it down, take the cover off and see if you’ve got a lot of dust accumulation. It leads to heat buildup and quirky problems. Get an air can (and hold your breath!)
“That’s funny. I have an old crappy computer and yet a power glitch enough to turn the TV off and
make the lights blink very perceptibly will not make it reboot.”
Yep, or its on another circuit in the house wiring.
Siding with a few of the other dopers here, random reboots are almost always caused by a poor power supply. Either your PS can’t get enough power to all the components, or it’s not stable in delivering that power continuously. It COULD be something else, but I would check your PS first. If you don’t have a 300W PS with an Athlon, get one…you’ll most likely notice your problems disappear.
Heat usually causes lockups, not reboots. So, if your machine was simply freezing a lot, then I would say heat, but reboots usually indicate a PS problem.
Jman