Paging Error then No Error

[GuerillaChiken]

I have a pretty basic setup, nothing flashy. ECS Motherboard PM-800m2, Pentium IV 3 ghz, 512MB RAM Elixir I think.

*edit*GEforce 5200 video card, newer power supply (had power supply issues about 4 months ago)

Recently I have been having what I thought were HDD problems. Ran chkdsk /f /r and found some bad sectors, repaired them roped them off whatever the thing does. Machine worked fine. Get back from vacation and the machine started crashing/restarting when playing games specifically. No blue screen.

Checking Event Viewer yielded a Paging file error. Knowledgebase says to replace hard drive, Maxtor website says to test different SATA cable and port. Being the optimist that I am, I go for the Maxtor suggestions, no good.

Go to store, buy another Maxtor HDD, 160gb. Install it, expect punch and pie when I fire up Eve. CRASH again. This time though, Event Viewer shows no error messages. No blue screen, nothing. Only thing that looks strange in the event log is a ID 6005 and ID 6009 Information logs. they have to do with the use of CTRL-ALT-DEL to shut down your machine. I didn't do that to shut down my machine, since it did it on its own, but I am unable to find any information that would suggest this is any kind of indicator.

I am keeping an eye on the heat level with SpeedFan and getting ready to run some tests on my RAM just to narrow down possibilities.

The lack of error messages sucks, with those I could atleast figure out what the flip is wrong. HELP!

G-Rilla

[DruidChiken]

Page file error is a hardware issue i would look to m/b or RAM

[GuerillaChiken]

Been letting it run for a little bit. Went a good 45 minutes without a reboot. Now though, it is rebooting very frequently, regardless if I am logged in to Windows or not. In safe mode it does not reboot, and I can check event viewer...which is still showing no errors or warnings.

For a while it would go about 30 seconds from the login screen appearing and then crash, whether I logged in or not. Occasionally I am able to log in, then it reboots shortly after, about two or three minutes later or longer.

I would run a RAM tester, but its not letting me boot from the CD I made. Will try to find another tool. Any suggestions? I don't have any compatible RAM sticks lying around at the moment to test.

I really hope its not the mother board. ...but that would explain alot.

[GuerillaChiken]

Man, just when I thought my night could get no worse...

Finally got a good bootable Memtest86+ disk to work, I get about 37% through one pass...and the computer shuts down. First attempt to restart fails, second after flipping the master power switch is successful, but only for about 4 seconds, machine shut off again.

After a third try and it successfully turning back on, I restart the memtest, only for it to shut down again.

I am done for the evening, and I am thinking motherboard as Druid suggested....time for sleep...

[GuerillaChiken]

Update for those interested...

Still getting shutdowns in memtest86. Tried an alternate stick of RAM, and the same things keep happening (restart after restart after...). Still not getting any errors/warnings resulting form the crash.

[SlackahChiken]

Pull PSU connector from M/B, Reset cmos/pull battery, see what happens, if your graphics card uses a power connector, make sure it isn't loose, if not, my guess is PSU is bad

[GuerillaChiken]

OK, moron alert, looks like it was a heat issue. Took the bastard apart, got the trusty canned air and cleaned the biznatch out. Running speedfan, previously was running at 64 degrees Celcius on the CPU, now after a cleaning that would make a proctologist proud, it is running at 47 degrees on the CPU. Also applied some more thermal gunk to the CPU/Heatsink.

In the end, I think it was a combination of a poor location and bad design for the Case. The case is situated so that clearance between the power supply case and the CPU fan is less than an inch. Cannot be good for circulation. I may try and purchase a new case or see if I can modify the case in some way to provide for better circulation.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, if any of you have any uber tips on cooling please let me know =).

[GuerillaChiken]

OK, moron alert, looks like it was a heat issue. Took the bastard apart, got the trusty canned air and cleaned the biznatch out. Running speedfan, previously was running at 64 degrees Celcius on the CPU, now after a cleaning that would make a proctologist proud, it is running at 47 degrees on the CPU. Also applied some more thermal gunk to the CPU/Heatsink.

In the end, I think it was a combination of a poor location and bad design for the Case. The case is situated so that clearance between the power supply case and the CPU fan is less than an inch. Cannot be good for circulation. I may try and purchase a new case or see if I can modify the case in some way to provide for better circulation.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, if any of you have any uber tips on cooling please let me know =).

[SmuttyChiken]

I was about to ask if you had bought a smaller power supply due to money resrictions becasue that will cause it to shut down / reboot as well ...

But all is good it seems ...

[GuerillaChiken]

The PSU is bigger than the one I had before, and puts out more power.

Check this out though. I only play two games, Eve and Star Wars Battlefront. The computer runs fine on both of those. The only time it has crashed since I cleaned it, is when I run the website www.pandora.com.

Its a music website, andit makes my computer crash, almost immediately...

Going to do some more research, but I have some Eve to catch up on =P