just thought i would make my own thread instead of hyjacking another one. as you know my computer restarts randomly. my ram is fine, it passed the memory tests 3 times. Ran a HD test and it says its failing. when i would run the fish tank screen saver ( 10 min idle to start it) it would restart between 10- 20 minutes. also when i play games, like wow or black and white 2 and when i render(sometimes). i have a 300 watt power supply with a ATI Radeon 9800, P4 1.5 ghz.

jfbeute suggested a bigger power supply, so i have ordered a 600(650?) watt power supply. hope this solution works. i realy want to be able to freakin render! lol

Sounds like you might need a new HD as well but the PS might take care of the problem.  Make sure you have enough fans to keep the comp cool.  I have 8 now and when I get the new MB I'm thinking about going to water-cooled.

Use Burn It Test 5.  It sounds like your video card memory is fried.  The app is free for 30 days google it.  It tests everything from cpu to floppy and more.  

If you take the test WB so we know what was wrong.

Quote - Use Burn It Test 5.  It sounds like your video card memory is fried.  The app is free for 30 days google it.  It tests everything from cpu to floppy and more.  

If you take the test WB so we know what was wrong.

ok i got it but how do i use it? i have my c: as the path and hit start. confused

Configure it 1st under Configuration Test Preferences.  Once you do that hit start.  You can hit start without configuration, but then it will test things you might not want tested like your floppy drive etc.

There should be an icon on your desktop to start the app.

i start it and its called Bart's Stuff test v5.1.4 is this the right one?

No, it is called BurnItTest Pro 5.2.  The words are all put together like that.  I can email you it if you want.  The file is 2.52 MB.

i see BurnINtest pro 5.2 that it?

Indeed, it is.

dude you just there watching this? lol...so am i

I get an email notice, so it is very easy to pay attention.  It is funny, we are practically having a conversation in real time through this forum.

Good luck with the test.

lol thanks. ill let ya know what it says

i just let it run untill its done correct?

Yes. 

Are you getting any errors in the 2d graphics column? 

If you want to test 3d graphics you have to turn it on in Test Duty Cycles.

ok im about to restart the tests with the 3D on with maximum load

well i got a big PASSED screen lol

That is good news.  The problem must not be hardware related.

still could be the power supply though?

Maybe it is the PSU, but at this point I am not sure. The BurnItTest did not report any HD problem, yet you have had reports of HD problems. It could be IRQ problem or a driver problem. Since you already ordered the PSU, you will soon know if the PSU is at fault.

What test gave you the hard drive failing result?

If your drive is flakey, it might test good, yet fail and crash Windows intermittantly - not uncommon. In other words, it happens to be working well at the time you test it, but fails every once in a while and crashes Windows.

300 watts should be okay for a P-4 or equal processor, so i doubt the new supply will help - unless the old PS was very low quality. Won't hurt either of course.

I'd replace the hard drive, if i were you.

BTW, i make a living as a PC consultant and deal with this stuff every day (and do web development/marketing).

Victoria is certainly right about being sure you have enough cooling airflow. You can buy fans or coolers specifically for your drive(s). And with lots of extra fans, you WILL need a beefier power supply, lol.

BTW, Victoria - if you get a new motherboard, it will probably have a dual core processor, no? That alone should cool things down a lot. I'm writing myself a spec for a new machine and i'm positive i won't need water cooling - though i'm looking at a fancy heat pipe cooler that replaces Intel's processor fan for the Core-Dual microprocessor.

jc, the reason I'm thinking water-cooling is because of where I live.  My office is on the second floor of my house and even with a 6 ton AC unit, it still averages about 90 degrees in the middle of the day up there.  Since I'll be working from home by the time summer comes, water cooling seems a good thing to me.  Phoenix averages 110 from mid-June until late-September.

i have left my case open so its not completely enclosed, also there seems to be alot of dust in the computer even after cleaning it with air cans.

and JC i used, i think "powermax" its a maxtor HD so its one of their tests that you boot up on and it tests it.

After keeping an eye on this thread, I will go with a PSU issue at the moment. PSU's are not only configured for a machine by the hardware that it has to run, but how long it has to run it - usually by hours per day. Many system manufacturers configure the size of the PSU with how long they think the computer will be used in a working day as well as what it has to power. Now if they think it's only going to be used for 8 hours per day for web browsing, word processing etc, but you use it to render 20 hours per day (as an example), then that obviously puts a far higher load on the PSU over an extended time.

It could also be heat - dust is a good insulator of heat. If you smoke by your machine, then that will also shorten the life of components.

Cheers

I just got my PSU today and installed it. apon looking at the old one i found it was only 250 watt ......

my new one is 650watt and its a dual fan one on the outside and one on the bottom ( inside the case) so that should help with air flow? Ill let you know how it works. im going to work now and gonna render and we will see if it restarts before i get home. crosses fingers

Hmmm...250 watt!! Not only low power, but cheap as well. Certainly the drain would and could affect the output of the different rails and cause rebooting!

I feel very optimistic for you now...with such an upgrade, you should see a marked improvement in stability :0)

Keep us updated.

Cheers

Oh, wow.  That sounds like a good improvement and could very well fix the problem.

ok well the computer did restart while rendering before i got home. dont know when but it was just once. im going to start the fishy screensaver when i go to bed and see what happened. 

I did notice, possibly, it being alittle faster after i installed the PSU. i opened vue6 and my scene and it just seemed like the little preview window was quicker.

i have alot of "baked on" dust on my motherboard, that could be a, the, one of the bigger problems right? im gonna try cleaning it with a air can and a brush later.

well during the night it restarted 3 times and when i turned on the monitor there were some messed up graphics on the screen saver aslo been getting some weird graphics while playing some games. i have the newest drivers too

Well, at this point.  It is tough to say what could be the problem.  

I would search the hardware forums about my mobo and see if others are having the same problem.  I would also think about formatting and rebuilding the entire computer with as little hardware as possible to see if I could identify what is casuing the probelm.

On the flip side it may be something easy that we are overlooking because we can't see the computer and don't know its history first hand.  Rebuilding it may be overkill.  

I would rerun both computer testing programs and see if they can spot a problem.  There might be a setting to run the  Burn Test for a longer amount of time.  This may help find the probelm.

It is a tough call.

I have built many computers that all work well, but I do own one that is problematic.  It  uses rambus ram and used to reboot freguently.  I could never figure the problem.  I ended up underclocking the ram and bus and now it is better.  If I push this computer too hard it will reboot.  I gave up on trying to fix it.  In hindsight I should have replaced the motherboard when the warranty was still good.  

The difference between my computer and yours is, mine was always like this and yours was not.  

I believe there is hope to stop your computer from random reboots.

And once a again, Good luck.

650 watts is way beyound your current needs.  400 to 450 is adequate, especially for the older video card you have, which should not require more than 350 watts.

Your drivers may be too new for your older video card.  Uninstall the current drivers, go back to the ones that were installed with the system when you got it.  

Check your video card and see if you have a heat sink or fan.  If a small one get a larger fan and apply some Silicon Arctic Circle Heat Paste.

If that does not work, then try to swap out your video card with a newer card and see if that is the problem.  

Add new heat paste to your CPU, and check the temperature monitor in your BIOS after running two hours.  If above 140 degrees you are having a heat problem, and the B plus may be failing.  

If all of that does not work, then Reset your BIOS to Manufactuer Defaults.  You may have to check the Mobo manual or reset using the MOBO CMOS shorting posts.  

Get a new Motherboard battery, they are cheap.  Otherwise, you may have a failing CMOS BIos chip.  Hopefully not!!!  

Damaged resistors and capacitors happen all too frequently.  Most boards are coated and so it usually does not make any difference how much dust accumulates.

If you clean the MOBO, air can only, no brushs, no solvents, and no pressure.  

I think that should get you started. 

hmm well not sure if this would help. it is a eMachince T4150 mobo, the video card i got later. also the heatsink i think it is, that metal piece ontop of the CPU, came off becuase one of the little loops that held it there came off and i had to flip it. that being said, my brother had the same one and same thing happened before mine did and his doesn't restart. hmmmm.

Ill try the drivers i got with the video card and clean it abit. I am planning on getting a new MoBo bundle. thinking a amd dual core and getting a new video card soon i hope

There is little chancve to upgrade an eMachine, do not waste your bucks.

I do not want to influence your MoBo thoughts, but you would be advised to go with Intel, especially is you like freeware and graphic editors, more stable. 

Here is a possible;  An ACPI Compliant 24 pin motherboard with a 450 to 500 watts PSU, a CPU Pentium D, 925 800 mhz or higher, nvidia 7800 GS 256 mem AGP or PCIe or higher, 2 gigs DDRII PC 4200 ram 533 mhz or higher. This setup will run all of the current software and the next generation of Vista.

I love ASUS motherboards, so far had no problems with them knock on wood :)

my PCs are in my bedroom so very dusty, I clena 'em with air can (once 3 weeks or so) , but 1 PC was acting a tad slow, the CPU heatsink looke dok UNTIl I removed the fan and found thick dust had jam packed it underneath and was choking it! cleaned that out with a brush.

Opening the case up can sometimes make heating worse, becuuse, the fan should pull amoving, and thus, cooler flow of air, stationary air only cools ot ambient temperature. Also open case = chance of accidents..coffee in the hard drive is a beaut, heeh.

Some damn nice cases aorund now, think I'll get this one next time I get new pc:

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15900

I used ot fix PCs...got out of it, drove me nuts with the garbage PCs you get that are a nightmare to fix (no names, no pack drill! but I'm sure some of you will know certain brands that were total pigs, lol)

One thing that was always bad were the cases, new ones have nice features like pull out motherboard trays. Well worth the extra $ (thoug I alas didn't have the $ at the time I bought my  current PCs) . I had to saw off a rivet in my gaming PC case cause it blocked my new video card when I tried to put it in, as the rivet was blocking the AGP card slot, jeesh.

ya also the newer cases look realy cool. well im guessing that little heatsink was for the onboard video cause i took off the fan it had and it was ontop of a realy big heat sink so that was the CPU heatsink, it was full of dust -_- .....

question, is the fan supposed to pull air in or away from the heat sink.

IMO, ASUS is the best.  Quality everything when you buy ASUS.

A fan for the heatsink is for pulling air in over the heatsink fins.

so it should be blowing down and not sucking air away?

yes

anyone wanna share their places for hardware? hehe I usualy look at  pricewatch.com.

I cleaned all the dust out and started. cpu temp was 38c.  if i get some of that artec glue i but that between the heatsink and cpu right?

 wow im learning so much ^_^ thanks guys i realy appreciate this

it just restared all i was doing was webbrowsing and rendering preview.i stopped and checked temp and CPU was 43c.

Newegg or tigerdirect are good places to buy hardware. I seriously doubt the cpu temps are causing the reboots. I would do the other advice I mentioned before reseating a cpu.

Yep! I agree NewEgg and TigerDirect.  Good prices, and sometimes they list info about the hardware you may not find easily at the Manufactuers Web.  If you are interested in buying from them check out the Reviews to see what others are saying about the hardware.  

Another point, is do the Shopzilla and other Mega Mall Searches, and you may find a price from either of the above that is lower than the one advertised on their Site.   Look for Rebates.

ok well i got my new HD Western digital 80gig, i installed it and installed the OS. installed everything else and it still restarted. i restored backward to just after i partioned the drive and installed vue. left it rendering for awhile. it rendered for an hour and a half, completing preview render. started a final render at a smaller res. i stopped that and started a 640 final render and went to bed... woke up and it had restarted... sigh...

Here is an idea to rule out overheating, you may want to try. Take the side panel off the tower and place a fan blowing on high at the mobo. Then test it hard with whatever makes it reboot the fastest. My thinking is, it is overheating. If it has overheated too much the mobo may be permanently damaged.

ok ill give it a try

Good point, the heat inside of a case can build quickly and then transfer than heat over to the CPU within an hour or two.  

I know there are those who will disagree, but I used to build cased for the big companies, IBM, etc.  We found that if we had a good intake and exhaust fan, sometimes it made no difference, because the power supply was the major heat source.  By just opening the case or in extreme conditions adding gently air flow, the heating stopped.  

I say gentle air flow, becasue if you add too much airflow you will reduce the intake effeicency of the CPU fan and it will fail to cool and casue more overheating. 

Personally, I think your mobo and video card are history and it is time to build new.  Sorry that is not much help.

well i did just that cobraeye, put my fan on high blowing into the open case and rendered 640 final and it restarted. im thinking that the MoBo is just pernametly damaged from previous overheating. i've had the computer for a long time and untill recently, when i got the bigger case, when i opened it there was always alot of dust.

When it rains it poors, and here it is almost tax time, one expense after another.  

AS long as I keep fooling around with these computers, I do not think I am going to have any money to retire on!  But, I am so addicted these monsters.

Sorry to hear the news. I wish we could have been more help in getting this rig running problem free again.

you were all a help it just figures it was the worst....ill be saving for a new MoBo. and i swear if that doesn't do it... im going to france....lol

Quote - 650 watts is way beyound your current needs.  400 to 450 is adequate, especially for the older video card you have, which should not require more than 350 watts.

Your drivers may be too new for your older video card.  Uninstall the current drivers, go back to the ones that were installed with the system when you got it.  

Check your video card and see if you have a heat sink or fan.  If a small one get a larger fan and apply some Silicon Arctic Circle Heat Paste.

If that does not work, then try to swap out your video card with a newer card and see if that is the problem.  

Add new heat paste to your CPU, and check the temperature monitor in your BIOS after running two hours.  If above 140 degrees you are having a heat problem, and the B plus may be failing.  

If all of that does not work, then Reset your BIOS to Manufactuer Defaults.  You may have to check the Mobo manual or reset using the MOBO CMOS shorting posts.  

Get a new Motherboard battery, they are cheap.  Otherwise, you may have a failing CMOS BIos chip.  Hopefully not!!!  

Damaged resistors and capacitors happen all too frequently.  Most boards are coated and so it usually does not make any difference how much dust accumulates.

If you clean the MOBO, air can only, no brushs, no solvents, and no pressure.  

I think that should get you started. 

about the motherboard battery, how does that effect the computer?