What could this be?

[ingeborgdot]

I know it could be a number of things but does anyone have a suggestion? It started about 7 days ago that my computer would just restart by itself. It did this several times in a short period. Now it has only done it a couple of times in the last several days. What does it sound like?

[ReelFiles]

Re: What could this be?

I would start with the basics;

Did anything change before this happened? Did you move the rig, install any new hardware or software?Are there any lose connections? Unplug everything and replug it to be sure. Try to avoid molex splitters whenever possible. Getting any Bluescreens? Disable automatic restart and post any errors in here. Is the rig overclocked, maybe it's overheating?

[ingeborgdot]

Re: What could this be?

No changes. New software 2 weeks earlier. No problems for those 2 weeks. Nothing has been moved. All connections appear to be tight. No BS but had restart checked. Have since unchecked. So if anything happens I will get a better look. It was oc to 2.79 but now at stock of 2.4 because that is what I thought also. It still has done it stock.

[ReelFiles]

Re: What could this be?

Could also be the memory, I would memtest tests #5 and #8 overnight see if that passes error free.

[ingeborgdot]

Re: What could this be?

I got my first BS this morning after unchecking the the restart box after error. How do I read it?<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

[ReelFiles]

Re: What could this be?

Demystifying the 'Blue Screen of Death'

This will give you a basic idea of what might be the cause. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL seems to be common with unstable / faulty memory, did you run memtest?

[ingeborgdot]

Re: What could this be?

In the process right now.

[ingeborgdot]

Re: What could this be?

What is this?
modification of a system code or a critical data structure was detected

[ReelFiles]

Re: What could this be?

Sounds like bad or unstable memory. What happened when you ran memtest?


Did you set the stock timings manually for your RAM? If you have stuff on AUTO make sure that the default values were detected properly.

I would restore the optimized defaults in BIOS, get UBCD and run memtest tests 5 & 8 again. If that memory faults with the stock settings it's time for RMA.

[ingeborgdot]

Re: What could this be?

I set it to the 2.0 manually that it likes. I hadn't had a problem for over a week and just today it did it again.
Memtest only showed 1 error in 6 hours.

[ReelFiles]

Re: What could this be?

The problem with instabilities is that they appear randomly. That's why longer periods of stress testing are more accurate at finding problems. I recommend testing for at least 8 hours with prime95 or Orthos before declaring a machine stable. All this shouldn't be an issue with stock settings though. I would return to the optimized defaults and make sure you are stable at stock settings before attempting any tweaking. You should be ok with the AUTO values that it sets, that's all I use for stock speed.