Community Newsletter: Q&A: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes!
- 5/9/08 1:48 PM
I agree with Bill
by waytron - 5/12/08 3:49 AM In reply to: Intel is what's bull by yetijonesHaving worked on thousands of computers over the years, I would have to agree with Bill. Intel based products tend to be more reliable than AMD. Yes, you can always find a lemon or a shinning start in just about anyones product line, but as a whole and in my personal opinion, Intel based system boards have always had the edge in reliability and compatability.
Well Done
by jthom14 - 5/11/08 8:32 AM In reply to: Mr. Watzman, I disagree. by Bill F.I have been working with computers for about 10 years now. I have been building and troubleshooting for myself and others for about 5 years now.
I have also taken A+ and Net+ also a short class on CAT5, Coaxal and Simese cable, Punch down abd termination as well. All of which I did specificaly for Wal-Mart in Bentonville for about 2 years.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I agree personaly with your answer. You were specific and left little doubt by very good factual resolutions to the problem. I believe you will proven right if the procedures are carried out correctly and an update is posted back on the baoed.
I build custom computers to sell, as well as upgrades, repairs and modifications as a second source of income and a professional hobbie.
Hope you will be around further, as I will have a problem sooner or later and will need to ask advise and hope to be lucky enough for a person of your knowledge, experience and expertise will respond.
Wish you well,
Jay
reboot of system
by thepcmanager - 5/3/08 11:49 AM In reply to: System rebooting every 20 minutes or so .... by Watzmantheir is a difference between intel & amd, it's all about the quality and intel has it. as for reboot, I have been in the business since 1975 and have personally built over 5000 systems and it sounds like the motherboard is the issue. chipset is probably overheating and when this happens it's just like a circuit breaker, it powers off.
have u tried to just boot in safe mode and let the computer sit for 20 minutes of so? this would also point to motherboard if the issue follows.
the pc manager
I Disagree
by bruceslog - 5/4/08 10:19 AM In reply to: System rebooting every 20 minutes or so .... by WatzmanI'm replying to your message on a self built tower with a AMD Athlon 1.7 CPU, on a Gigabyte motherboard, with 2.5 GB DDR Ram, that is about 8 years old now. I. and many others, agree that the AMD 1.7 Athlon is a very well made, reliable, stable CPU. I myself use it in 2 of my home systems... one now running WinXP Pro SP2, the other running PCLinuxOS 2007. Both CPU"s handle my on board sound as well as Shared Graphics duties from these nVidia 6200 graphics cards.
I've been using this CPU steadily since 1999, and at one time my CPU cooling fan quit working on this chip, yet the chip survived and continues to perform to this day.
Indeed, I dread the day when the chip finally does fail, because I haven't found any spares to replace it when it does. If I do find spares, you can bet that I will buy a hand full of them, just in case. That is how much I value this CPU.
BTW - I had other towers with comparable Intel CPU's that have now all failed, either internally or by overheating. Seems that once a cooling fan over an intel chip stops working, the chip goes p00f within seconds.
Not my idea of reliable.
And like you, all of this this is just my opinion. 
Power Supply
by Aard88 - 4/25/08 5:13 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It sounds to me like your power supply has bitten the dust. The are relatively cheap and easy to replace. Just make sure to get one that fits the form factor of your case and get the highest wattage you can afford.
PC Rebooting
by tunnelboy2 - 4/25/08 5:15 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It could be any number of things, but it sounds like a classic case of overheating. It could also be a bad power supply too. I would start by searching for a utility that could read the temperature of your CPU. There should be freeware programs available for this. You can also view the temperature at bootup if you go into the SETUP screen (usually by tapping the DELETE or ESC key) as soon as the computer starts up. This would be best to do after the first reboot so you can see what the temperature of the CPU is at reboot. If it's excessive, (60 degrees Celsius would be on the hot side...) you can check to make sure the fan located ON the CPU is spinning properly. You can also buy one of those cans of compressed air and blow the dust out of the heat sink which is located under that fan. If that doesn't decrease the temperature, you could replace the heat sink making sure to follow the directions exactly (especially the part about using the thermal compound). If that doesn't do it, then the CPU is probably defective. You can replace it very easily, but you would probably find a cheaper package deal for a faster and better motherboard/cpu combo at this point.
If the CPU is not overheating, I would try replacing the power supply. They are relatively inexpensive and fairly easy to replace.
Good luck!
It could be a bunch of things, here's some stuff to try.
by Bill F. - 4/25/08 5:16 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It could be dirt. You should power down and do a through cleanout of the memory bus and various card slots. Reseat all of them.
Now lets get onto what I think is more likely to be the cause.
1. Power Supply. Your Proc is fairly old as they go, is your Power Supply the original? Chances are its full of dirt at the very least but it also might not be up to spec anymore. If you have access to a compatible PS from an computer that is operating well, swap them and see if the computer continues its odd behaviour. If it does not, then you need a new PS. If you are feeling brave, and I do not recommend this unless you really know your way around high voltages, because even unplugged they carry a lethal jolt, disassemble the PS and blow the dirt out of it. Frankly, they are cheap, if you think its the PS replace it. When PS's overheat they cause reboots. The little fans inside them stop working properly after they get clogged up with dirt. Dust bunnies also do a good job of keeping the circuitry from being cooled off.
2. It might still be your harddrive. Run a diagnostic program from your HD's manufacturer and see if their are any issues popping up. Again, old HD's can start to have problems as well. Reformatting does not fix a problem that is related to circuit board or even connector failures.
If you want to see if its a HD problem you might want to try creating a boot partition on a portable HD and then unplug you HD and install the OS for your computer on a portable HD, then change your boot order to boot from a USB drive. Since this is a competely different hard drive if the problems go away then it very well might be the original HD. Or it might be a problem with your IDE channels on your motherboard.
3. It might be the MB. As they age some components start to act up. Capacitors leak, etc. Rebooting is one of the symptoms of this problem.
To summarize.
1. Check for dirt and clean up.
2. Check the power supply, they get weak with age.
3. The hard drive might also be failing.
4. The MB might be failing. YOu can examine them, but I'd just do a check for issues with that particular motherboard on the net. If there's an issue, someone has probably already documented it.
Finally, if you get the bluescreen of death write down the codes on that screen and google the codes. Lots of clues are available. Its how I found out about dirt and memory sticks on one of my AMD computers.
Good luck!
shutdown every 10 minutes
by dong - 4/25/08 5:18 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
1. check the power supply
2. make sure the memory is seated correctly
3. make sure the cooler on the CPU is not full of dust and the unit is overheating.
4. Overheating for any other reason, download install MBM (motherboard manager) and check the heat of your system both motherboard and processor if supported, yours should be
5. does the unit tell you it is going to shutdown, if so quickly quick start, then run, then type in shutdown /a, press ok and see if this stops the action
PC keeps rebooting every 10-2
by kasunu - 4/25/08 5:19 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
f experience of me of PC my [of] restat each;every 10 or 20 minute. biggest possibility because PC prosecor too hot become to try cheque or change fan / cooler of Prosecor and if not yet succeeded to try you change its power it[him] or last change its its[his] aja.
this may help
by stephanie24fnj - 4/25/08 5:21 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
believe it or not i have had this problem 2 times do to power outtages. Each time I replaced the power supply..problem solved. it may or may not help you but they only cost like 40 dollars i would try it
CPU/Motherboard Is Culprit
by wexmary - 4/25/08 5:30 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Bad capactitators on the motherboard are usually the culprit on that. I don't see the hard drive as a problem.
I agree with that
by platemoon - 4/25/08 8:10 PM In reply to: CPU/Motherboard Is Culprit by wexmaryIf you have been able to do a clean install of windows, probably you power supply and memory are just fine. The problem here is when you try to use the full potential of the motherboard like installing devices drivers for your integrated hardware. The strange thing here is, if it reboots every 10 or 20 min, how are you able to install windows? In that processor is imposible to intall it in less than 20 min. I know bucause I have intalled Windows (different versions) in that kind of processor or faster like an Athlon XP 2400+. I spend 3 months figuring out a problem like that with and Asus motherboard, first memory compatiblility problem, second the Asus TNT Vanta 16MB Video card had driver compatibility problems and last I found that the PCI sound card had compatibility problems with everthing. It chached the PC like 20 to 30 min after plaing a DVD movie, or 1 min after starting a pc game like Star Craft.
That CPU was made to support up to 85C degrees, but after 70C you may get random strange, and never seen before erros. If your termal reading is 60C to 70C, doesn't mean it will reboot for that temperature but is not a good idea to keep it that hot. Actualy if you have an overheating problem the computer should turn it off itself, or show you a black screen.
Other posible problem may be memory voltages fluctiations, check if you 3.3v on your power supply is not steady. I have seen that to.
Well I hope you find a cure for your PC.
About the AMD and Intel isue, the problem is not the hardware is Windows. I have used AMD Opteron 244 (server class CPUS) on my PC for testing up to 8 days always on 24/7 downloading and uploading files diferent programs at the same time, chating with instant messenger, video capturing, watching tv on it, encoding videos, ripping cds, recording cds, plaing PC games while I am doing some of the other stuff metioned, and under extream circunstances. For example the room had no air conditioner, only a fan to cool myself not the PC, when I left the room I closed all windows and doors and let the PC all day long in that extream hot room. And after all that no crash. System board Tyan S2875 AMD Chipset, they use to know how to do chipsets right. The got my respect for that. Intel on the other site, I know what they are capable off and sometimes they do it right sometimes they do it wrong.
Perfection is something that we can only think of.
Check the thermal grease
by rsbruner - 4/25/08 5:43 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I had this happen on an AMD Athlon 2500+ CPU. Everything was fine then it would just shut down. The thermal grease between the processor and heat sink was dry and brittle. Once I cleaned everything and put down new grease there have been no problems.
Check the power supply
by shporang - 4/25/08 5:47 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I had almost this exact same problem with similar hardware. It turned out that my power supply was failing. Some of the symptoms I had were that my computer would shut down or reboot at random, occasionally it would refuse to turn on (sometimes for days at a time!). There are a few ways to check if this is the problem...You could switch out for a different power supply, you could purchase a power supply tester, or you could use a multimeter & look up the wire color code (It is pretty much standardized, and not difficult to look up) and manually test it yourself.
PC rebooting every 10-20minutes
by screamqueen2 - 4/25/08 5:47 PM In reply to: Help! My PC keeps rebooting every 10 to 20 minutes! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You may have malware (vicious software) on your pc, you may need to install rogueremover or some other malware remover to get rid of the problem.
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