Random Reboots (No BSOD's)

[llDemonll]

So I've recently installed Windows 7 Professional and am now getting random computer restarts every so often, and the computer will lock up on reboot and restart itself. I have resorted to only 'Sleep'ing the computer when I leave because it's too annoying to have to deal with 15 minutes of reboots just to get the computer up and running.

My User Profile has a spec's of my computer, the only thing changed in the BIOS is Gigabyte has a "CPU 'Speed'" setting that allows for Standard, Turbo, or Extreme and mine is set at Turbo. All it does is allow the CPU to overclock itself slightly if it is strained a lot and needs a little extra oomph. I don't do CPU heavy stuff a lot (games, internet, no rendering or huge mathematical equations or anything) so I don't think that would have any effect. The second thing is my RAM on NewEgg says it is 7-7-7-18 @ 1.5v so i changed the timing in the BIOS to 7-7-7-18 and left the voltage at the factory BIOS setting of 1.5v. I have USB mouse and keyboard support enabled but other than that everything in my BIOS is factory settings.

So the problem again, is that the computer will lock up when it's booting, on the 'Starting Windows' screen always and within 2-3 seconds of the exact same point all the time. I just took my computer apart, dusted it out, checked all the connections, unseated all the RAM and video card, mixed the RAM up and made sure the card was seated well and rechecked all the power and cable connections and the same problem persists. I plugged the monitor into the other video card slot as well. Video card is in the PCI slot closest to the CPU.

EDIT: This has yet to happen when I have been using the computer, it will always happen when I am downstairs, playing XBOX (other monitor input) or AFK somewhere and have been away from the computer or not using it for over 10 minutes, which leads me to believe it is something with the system wanting to sleep/shutdown/something. Hard drive is set to never power off, monitor is set to power off after 10 minutes.

I changed my power settings to say 'Don't restart automatically' because I heard that way I can see BSOD's but I've yet to see one, and whenever I get this error the computer will automatically restart.

Event Viewer says my problem is a Kernel-Power error (Event 41). Looking through Event Viewer at the 'Criticals' and 'Errors' the only common thing I see is that when the 'Error' tells me what time the 'Critical' occurred, there is always a Service Control Manager event with 'The Disk Defragmenter service entered the running state' and ~8 seconds later is when the Error said the computer was unexpectedly shut down.

There are a very few HAL Error's (Event ID 12) that say 'The platform firmware has corrupted memory across the previous system power transition. Please check for updated firmware for your system.'

From the most recent boot log (when the computer finally booted tonight):
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\vga.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\srv.sys
those were the only things that did not load, i've heard that NDProxy is network disagreements between hardware/drivers but I've checked the device manager and it says there is nothing wrong and it only shows my wireless card and onboard card.

I can't find the minidump files anywhere, not sure if there is something important I'm supposed to do to get those but I can't.

I have the latest VGA drivers, Windows says it's up to date, mouse and keyboard both have drivers, wireless card has drivers, audio has drivers; all the hardware I have is current in drivers (downloaded the newest ones when I reformatted a few days ago).

Any, any, any, any help is appreciated. I can provide any information that you need, I just don't know off the bat what I need to provide.

 

[torrentg]

This tells you everything you need to know.

"Please check for updated firmware for your system."

Minidumps are at C:\Windows\Minidump should you need to upload them for us. Don't worry about that for now.

Go to Gigabyte's site, get latest bios and flash your board. Do not turn off machine no matter what and do not cause any circuit breakers to blow by using high amounts of power in your home, while doing so. If your home has any kind of power problems, shut as much stuff off as you can before you flash.

I found 3 pages of your motherboard.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/BIOS_Model.aspx?ProductID=3103#anchor_os = Revision 1.6
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/BIOS_Model.aspx?ProductID=2989#anchor_os = Revision 1.0
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=3018 = SLI Model

It is crucial that you choose the one that matches what you have. They all have beta bios available. Choose that.

 

[llDemonll]

I have no dump files anywhere on my PC, seems to me they are only created when computers BSOD? and I've yet to see mine BSOD. Computer has been in an endless cycle for ~30 minutes trying to boot before I gave up. Writing this from the laptop.

I'll try flashing it later and let you know how that works out.

 

[torrentg]

I admit I didn't exactly read everything carefully the first time around. The quote caught my eye immediately and I focused all of my attention on that.

"There are a very few HAL Error's" - one is enough for me to make bios update recommendation, considering what it said after.

Yes, please let me know. Cool.

 

[chev65]

Starting problems at the same point everytime usually relate to a PSU voltage delivery problem. As in too much voltage flucuating during start up. It's been talked about at EVGA forums and seems to occur with certain PSU's and X58 systems.

If you exhaust your driver resources the PSU might be the next place to look besides the usual memory testing of course.

 

[llDemonll]

Will do - didn't get a chance to flash yesterday, however coincidentally (don't ask why I thought of this) but I unplugged my XBOX from the power strip the computer is on and after the 30 minutes of recycles during boot it started up first time. I know the XBOX power converter thing is always on, sucking however much power and so I was thinking maybe the power strip couldn't provide all the power needed with the computer and XBOX and 2.1 speakers running off it. Haven't shut down to see if it actually worked (doubt it did) but I'll have to soon.

Power supply I haven't thought of ever, it has enough power to run my setup in Crossfire so I've never thought it could be the deciding factor (unless my theory of it not being able to draw enough power in the first place from above).

I'll flash first in a few hours after class and let you guys know how that goes.

 

[llDemonll]

Long reply - Halloween took precendent.

Flashed the BIOS using Gigabyte's @BIOS utility (windows environment instead of DOS) to the newest version and it had to restart after that. crashed once in the same place as it normally did then started up. had to restart yesterday and it crashed once in the same place then was fine.

Not entirely sure if it fixed everything, but it *knock on wood* seems to have made it slightly better. I still get no dump logs in my windows folder anywhere, dunno what's up with that

edit: went to look through event viewer because computer did finally crash once while i was using it before i switched the BIOS and last night I was playing a game and the screen went blank (figured the computer had crashed) but it just crashed to desktop (minimized the game, didnt even crash it) and it said there was a HAL error 'The platform firmware has corrupted memory across the previous system power transition. Please check for updated firmware for your system.' and the event right before that (10 seconds before) is 'The system is entering sleep. Sleep Reason: Application API'

 

[llDemonll]

Flashing the BIOS definitely did nothing. Just sat in the boot cycle for the past half hour trying to get into Windows. I'm spent for ideas. I have no dumps, my computer "doesn't make" them (I can't find them anywhere on my computer), I have no BSOD messages to post, the only thing I have to troubleshoot is eventviewer and the boot logs.

 

[H2SO4]

Flashing the BIOS definitely did nothing. Just sat in the boot cycle for the past half hour trying to get into Windows. I'm spent for ideas. I have no dumps, my computer "doesn't make" them (I can't find them anywhere on my computer), I have no BSOD messages to post, the only thing I have to troubleshoot is eventviewer and the boot logs.

A bit of background info before the suggestions:

- You have no minidumps because BSODs are not your issue because the spontaneous reboot symptom is different in nature.

- The firmware errors are definitely a sign of badness on some hardware level, as torrentg said, although it's impossible to be certain whether the same condition is also responsible for the spontaneous reboots.

- The spontaneous reboot is, even by itself, very smelling-of-hardware-defect. Coupled with the "update your firmware" events, my gut feeling is that the machine's hardware is very probably unreliable.

- If it's under warranty, consider exchanging it. Once you're on the latest BIOS, the firmware errors alone are sufficient reason to do it, especially if you've reinstalled Windows from scratch only to see the same symptoms reappear.

Otherwise, if this box is networked to another Windows machine on your home LAN, I can suggest a method which would definitively reveal the cause of the spontaneous reboots as either hardware or software, though not which component. It's fiddly, and it'll probably take an hour or so just to set up, so let me know if you want to try it and I'll write up the details.

 

[llDemonll]

by networked do you mean shared harddrive?

if i knew which piece was failing i would exchange it, has been less than a year (approx 8 months) since i bought my computer, but i'm not super keen on sending in all the pieces or sending them in one by one. the only two things i could think it would be are motherboard (most likely) or video card.

hardware unreliable is what i've pretty much assumed this whole time, i bought my processor only ~ 3 months after they were released to the market which probably wasnt the best idea, but i wanted the option to upgrade in the future without buying a whole new motherboard etc

 

[H2SO4]

by networked do you mean shared harddrive?

Literally two Windows machines (this one and another one), both with NICs plugged into a switch/router, and able to communicate with each other via the network. It doesn't matter whether you "share" files between them presently.

if i knew which piece was failing i would exchange it, has been less than a year (approx 8 months) since i bought my computer, but i'm not super keen on sending in all the pieces or sending them in one by one. the only two things i could think it would be are motherboard (most likely) or video card.

Unfortunately, that's the flip side of the "building the PC yourself" coin, and most of us will empathise because we've also been there. It might be the motherboard, or the video, or the PSU, or the processor itself... it's difficult to be certain without the luxury of similar hardware to perform trial-and-error component swaps.

hardware unreliable is what i've pretty much assumed this whole time, i bought my processor only ~ 3 months after they were released to the market which probably wasnt the best idea, but i wanted the option to upgrade in the future without buying a whole new motherboard etc

If you feel you've done enough to convince yourself that it's hardware, then you may want to ask the moderators to move your thread to the "hardware" section of the forum. The relevant expertise tends to congregate over there.

 

[vortex]

I had a similar problem with random crashes when the computer was unattended. I tracked it down to sleep mode. I now have the monitor turn off but with sleep mode disabled and the system has been running for two weeks non-stop with no crashes. I know that some people had this problem with earlier beta versions of Win 7 but I am using a clean install of the retail DVD version of Home Premium.

 

[llDemonll]

yea, mine doesn't ever sleep, however it will still randomly crash when i'm away from the computer for a bit

edit: computer definitely just crashed when i put it to sleep, another kernel-power error according to event viewer