Hi all,

I'm experience a strange problem with one of my PC's I'm hoping someone can give me a hand with (I've had this for almost a year now, but the problem didn't start until about a week or two ago).

Once in a while, about every two days or so, the computer will freeze (no mouse/keyboard input or screen updates whatsoever) for about 1-3 seconds, then the pc will restart.

The behavior is what I would expect with an overheated CPU or the like, but I'm not sure that's the case (the heatsink and vent ports are all very clean).

At some point in the past, I had found some means of monitoring the CPU temp and other related diagnosis information, but I don't remember where.

Any suggestions on what to look at?

Thanks,

I assuming you would have said so, but do this occur in a reproducible manner. Are you always in a specifc application or doing a specific task when it occurs?

Is your OS up-to-date? I had a client where whenever he connected to CITRIX, his computer shutdown!? We applied SPs to WinXP, Citrix client, Office (computer was not up-to-date at all) and the problem went away.

Perhaps sometime like http://sourceforge.net/projects/pmger/?source=directory or http://www.snapfiles.com/get/siw.html (I haven't used it) could help. The following link could also be of interest: http://rancidtaste.hubpages.com/hub/How-to...perating-system.

I had thought at first that it might have been a VMware Workstation issue, but since I've made it a point not to open the app, and it still happens, without any particular pattern, unfortunately. The OS is up to date.

I'll take a look through the links.

Thanks,

What type of computer? When I was an Net Admin, we had an issue with Dells rebooting spontaniously, we eventually found a patch on Dell's website. Perhaps you could look at your vendor's knowledgebase in case it is some known issue.

It's an HP.. I'll dig up all the hardware on it as well and check the vendor sites for known issues.

Tough one to test...

Thanks Daniel,

There are many reason that can create this type of problems:

1. 100% CPU overheated.
a. are you overcloking your mobo?
b. are your CPU(s) and/or fans clean?

2. Does it show a blue screen when shooting down?
a. memory crash
b. hdd crash.

3. Do you have external video adapter (pci). If Not?
a. check if you shipset is getting too hot.

4. Power
a. how many hdd you have installed
b. if you have external pci video card, check if power is OK for it to work.

5. last and must important OS.
a. virus

I would recommend going over all of those steps, if everything works fine. Then your problem is not hardware.

(sorry about my spelling)

Does the Windows Event Log shed any light?

Hi guys, thanks for the suggestions.

No blue screen, no mem problems that I'm aware of, no HDD problems... the comp actually runs excellent normally. I was thinking CPU temp, but it's been a while since I've checked it and don't remember how to offhand, actually. I can remember in the past having a CPU temp issue, where the machine at the time just shut down completely, no lockup whatsoever. In this case, it's a complete lockup (no input at all), for about 2-5 seconds before restarting. Walter, I took a quick look at the event log, but most of that stuff is gibberish to me. In any case, I didn't see anything that might give clues as to the problem in there.

I had originally thought that it might have been a problem when running a Win7 Pro VM with VMware, but I've since scrapped that idea, for the most part anyway.

It hasn't happened in a while, but that's probably because I've been too busy... see, the time before last it happened, I realized that it has happened a couple times while playing a particular flash game I go to when things are a little slow... so later I figured I'll try again and see if it quits, and sure enough, it did. Thinking back, I'm almost positive that every time the thing has crashed was while I've either been actively playing that game or have had it minimized and doing something else. When I don't play it, it doesn't seem to happen. I haven't tried since then, but one of these days I'll confirm for sure.

I run two VMs simlutaneously on an almost daily basis, one for a legacy XP app for work, and one for my 2010 Access install and general testing/messing aroundin Win7. Over the past few weeks I haven't had the lockup issue, even though the VMs are both running.

I can't imagine what might be going on with this particular game to cause this, but it seems to be the culprit, for whatever reason.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/shrug.gif)

Have you updated the video drivers lately? You may want to check for newer versions. Flash is extremely video intensive and can throw memory faults easily. You may also want to update Flash itself.

I've kept flash updated regularly, and as far as I know the nVidia updates are handled through Windows Update, so I think I should be all set there... I'll confirm though.

Interestingly enough, I run some pretty resource intensive 3d CAM modeling software on one of the VMs (as well as the main OS, often simlutaneously) and haven't had issues with that. Also, my home computer, which is not weak but not nearly as powerful as this problematic work comp runs this flash game just fine (everybodyedits.com - it's a simple nintendo or arcade-like game).

I haven't tested yet, but it may be that this is only happening when the VMs are open or have been closed since the last reboot and this game is played. In most cases this is true (I'm generally always running the VMs), but I'm not sure if it's every case or not.

I know VM'ing does some pretty neat stuff with hardware... far beyond me, and I wonder if there's some little bit of residue that the flash is crashing on?

At present time it's no longer a problem per se - I'm not worried about any file corruption or other problems because I can control it by not playing this game, but on the other hand I'm still curious to know.

I'll try out some of these suggestions over time and see where it puts me.

Thanks again,