Random restarts in Windows 7

[j1982a]

Hi,

I'm hoping someone can please help me. My computer is regularly randomly restarting for no obvious reason. There is no BSOD even though it's set to not automatically restart in the advanced system settings -> startup and recovery.

It will restart when I'm doing pretty much anything although it's more than guaranteed to do so if I'm watching a video while using Adobe's Encore.

It also restarts if I'm playing online poker with poker tracker open and running. I could be playing for hours or minutes. Eventually it goes.

It'll also restart sometimes if I'm just browsing the web. I think it's also restarted a few times when just sitting Idle.

It's a fairly new build, I built it on 24/12/2010. I've monitored the temperatures and voltages, the fans are working fine and aren't clogged up. The PSU is a Corsair HX850W so I really can't see that being the problem (I hope not anyway, it wasn't cheap!)

I do have Windows XP dual booting on a second disk drive which I rarely use. This was taken from an old machine and plugged straight into the new build. After updating drivers for it I never had any problems with XP when I used it until the restarts started happening in windows 7. Scan disk kept kicking in on the restart so I replaced that drive with a new one. Scan disk no longer kicks in on the restart but it still keeps restarting!

I've changed settings in the BIOS. That hasn't helped. I did a fresh install of Window 7 (it kept the old installation in a folder called windows.old for some reason) I rolled back the graphics card driver to the one on the disk that the graphics card shipped with. That didn't help.

I've tried different virus and malware scanners to rule out viruses. Today, I even took out my sound card to see if that was causing the problem. That didn't help.

I even saw some advice about upping the voltage on the RAM. I have stepped up about 3 levels. I don't think this has helped either but I am reluctant to push it any further. The computer isn't overclocked in any way.

I have scanned the memory with memtester. That didn't report any problems. I haven't had any problems running prime 95 aside from when it restarted while doing so, again with no errors. The only thing showing up in the event log is error 41. The CPU had gone up to 68oC and wasn't rising.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them

Windows 7 Professional 64bit OEM
System Built in December 2010. All new parts aside from the Maxtor Hard Disk and Sound Blaster Audigy.
I reinstalled the OS a few days ago.

 

[gregrocker]

Someone will read your BSOD report soon, but one thing I notice is you said you reinstalled Win7 but have a windows.old folder which means you didnt' wipe the HD. In a random restart situation like this, you want to wipe the boot sector of possible corrupt or infected code from the DVD Command Line: Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command
DISKPART At PC Startup

Then clean reinstall using the drivers given by the installer or quickly updated by optional Windows Updates. Import only the drivers missing in Device Manager after install and optional Updates.

 

[j1982a]

aaarrggghh not again!!! It took me ages to reinstall everything. I was very surprised that windows left the old installation intact when I reinstalled. I can't recall being give the option to format the disk.

I'm running memtest 86+ v4.2 on the machine at the moment. It has been going nearly 13 hours now, completed 8 passes and no errors. Should I leave it for 24 hours?

I'm using a laptop at the moment and I hate the tiny screen!

 

[fimble]

I personally think your 8 pass 13 hour stint should be enough if no errors. General consensus seems to be to get past the 7th pass with no errors, I could be wrong (again!). Will see if I can see anything in your report for you, don't hold your breath!!

First off, disable/remove your ASRock OCTuner and other ASRock utilities. Make sure you are using default settings until your problems have been resolved.

You really need to sort out your start up programs, you surely don't need all of those starting up with your PC. In the start menu Search box type MSConfig and then select the Startup tab. I have eight in there of which three are "security" stuff.

 

[mgorman87]

Event[738]:
  Log Name: Application
  Source: Windows Error Reporting
  Date: 2011-05-11T13:33:30.000
  Event ID: 1001
  Task: N/A
  Level: Information
  Opcode: Info
  Keyword: Classic
  User: N/A
  User Name: N/A
  Computer: Inte_I5
  Description: 
Fault bucket 1501338861, type 5
Event Name: WindowsWcpOtherFailure3
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: 6.1.7601
P2: base\wcp\componentstore\com\transaction.cpp
P3: Windows::COM::CPendingTransaction::IStorePendingTransaction_Pend
P4: 290
P5: 80070bc9
P6: 0x53732d61
P7: 
P8: 
P9: 
P10: 

Attached files:

These files may be available here:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\Critical_6.1.7601_1225ca7f3a9fc8d0c67aab39443462c69f0469b_0b2e6703

There are tons of these errors in your event logs. I'm not sure what they have to do with or if they have to do with your crashes, but it's something that should be looked into.

EDIT: It appears it has to do with Windows Update and that you have pending updates that need a shutdown/reboot to install.

Have you tried using a wired connection for your internet?

Have you tried booting w/ selective start up to see if it's anything that is loading that causes the crashes?

 

[fimble]

Good spot mgorman87. I'd give you some luuurrrve, but apparently I've got to spread it about a bit (wish someone had told me that in my teens!!).

 

[gregrocker]

aaarrggghh not again!!! It took me ages to reinstall everything. I was very surprised that windows left the old installation intact when I reinstalled. I can't recall being give the option to format the disk.

Are you aware you need to boot the disk to get a formatted install, or that formatting erases nothing but leaves all code (including corrupt code) on the HD?

SSD - HDD Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

First uncheck everything in msconfig>Startup besides AV and gadgets. All others are freeloaders on the RAM, CPU, startup time and can spy on you. After restarts, in msconfig>services "Hide all MS Services" to see what is running without your permission and uncheck it if so. Turn it off in its program preferences or uninstall it.

 

[j1982a]

Could those errors re the windows update be down to the restarts mgorman87?

ie - the random restarts while an update is waiting to install means they don't get their normal procedure to install when rebooting normally?

I'll cut out the start up aps and ditch the wireless connection for a bit trailing cables :huh:

I've still got Memtest running. 19 hourse 13 passes 0 errors.

I did boot with the windows 7 disk to reinstall windows gregrocker. I will try another reinstal if I have no joy with anything else.

Thank you.

 

[mgorman87]

Could those errors re the windows update be down to the restarts mgorman87?

ie - the random restarts while an update is waiting to install means they don't get their normal procedure to install when rebooting normally?

I'll cut out the start up aps and ditch the wireless connection for a bit trailing cables :huh:

I've still got Memtest running. 19 hourse 13 passes 0 errors.

I did boot with the windows 7 disk to reinstall windows gregrocker. I will try another reinstal if I have no joy with anything else.

Thank you.

Possibly. The errors could be unrelated. I just saw them in the event logs and thought I'd post.

 

[j1982a]

This may seem daft but I've had a think back.

The machine was working fine for a short while. When the error first started occurring I had a look back to what had been going on with the machine. There had been some updated C++ libraries installed by windows update or another so that was one of my initial thoughts. Obviously that wasn't the culprit.

Another thing I recall is that I wasn't using two monitors to start with.

I've unplugged the secondary one for now and will see how I get on.

Does this seem at all feasible to anyone?!?

 

[gregrocker]

I'd shift focus to the configuration of the dual display after making sure you have the latest display driver. You may also need the GPU's full software package to get full functionality of the dual display. I'd try with and without the full package, too.

 

[j1982a]

Just a bit of an update on this,

It seemed to be working with the single display for a while. I've had 3 days out of it in the past without the random restarts (that is with the PC in sleep mode for a lot of that time) so I wasn't going to count my chickens.

I had a couple of BSOD's 1 of them while I was installing the latest display driver - interesting that windows update directed me to the 32 bit version. 1 was an ntoskrnl.exe I'm assuming that one is down to a driver somewhere - I tried doing a chkdsk /r anyway and that didn't appear to alter anything.

Aside from that encore was working fairly stably with Chrome & Outlook open so I decided to go back into the BIOS and reset the settings back to default - I didn't want my RAM frying with the upped voltage.

Mistake. Random restart city (sorry!)

So more playing about with the BIOS settings, changing one at a time to see what happens (the manual isn't very helpful at all

"ASROCK VDroop Control - Use this to enable or disable ASRock VDroop control. Configuration options [With VDroop] and [Withoug VDroop]. The default value is [With VDroop]."

Yeah, thanks for that.

I wasn't having much joy until I ramped the DRAM voltage up again a couple of steps. I'm not convinced it's right yet but I'll see how it gets on.

Obviously I'd like to have the two monitors running but I'll leave that for a while until I'm happy that the restarts have stopped.

 

[fimble]

Hi j1982a,

I had a couple of BSOD's 1 of them while I was installing the latest display driver - interesting that windows update directed me to the 32 bit version.

It's one of the reasons you should always get your driver updates yourself. Never rely on Windows Update or Device Manager to update your drivers until you've exhausted your PC Mfr., Motherboard Mfr. or the software/hardware Mfr. resources.
Although that's the first time I've heard of it giving you 32bit when there's most likely 64bit available. That's probably why you blue screened there.

Also when updating graphics drivers you should ideally:

• Download and install Driver Sweeper.
• Boot to Safe Mode
• Uninstall your current Graphics Driver set up using Driver Sweeper.
• Reboot to Normal Mode.
• Install your new Graphics Driver set up.

HTH.

 

[gregrocker]

This is not XP. There is no reason to advise average users to go on a complicated driver hunt.

MS spent a fortune getting the drivers into the installer or quickly updated via Optional Updates, even paying manufacturers to build them under WHQL so that they wouldn't hold out to force us to buy newer hardware as they did in Vista.

We have cases here all the time where users unknowingly change out the drivers given by installer and have performance problems that require reinstall. I would not change out any drivers given by installer and optional Updates unless performance problems point to that driver.

Sure there will be occasional mistakes with drivers from Updates, but nothing compared to trying to do them yourself using old generation tools. It's like trying to use a wrench on a Lexus' computer.

 

[fimble]

Sure there will be occasional mistakes with drivers from Updates, but nothing compared to trying to do them yourself using old generation tools. It's like trying to use a wrench on a Lexus' computer.

Old generation tools never mentioned by me!

 

[gregrocker]

We get no reports that I've seen in Win7 that driver remnants cause conflicts when installing new drivers, as they could in XP.

This along with full automation of drivers in Win7 makes tools we once depended upon like Driver Sweeper and DriverMax obsolete.

If I sound emphatic it's because I just reinstalled my nephew's Win7 via TeamViewer after he used DriverMax to update his drivers.

 

[fimble]

I'll bow to your superior knowledge. Although I'd never have trusted DriverMax with anything.

 

[j1982a]

I thought I had it again! Still getting random restarts. I think I'm forgetting they're random so get a bit excited when the machine stays up for a while!

It went down last night while I was encoding a video file. I'd been playing about with 3D Mark 03, 05 and 06 before that and also ran OCCT (not for long admittedly) none gave problems.

I booted into windows xp (32 bit) on a separate drive and encoded several files with no problem whatsoever. I haven't used XP much on this machine but on my previous computer XP never crashed. Well, ok it locked up when using Firefox after updating to 3.6 or something like that but that could always be recovered just by closing it in task manager.

Today I have unplugged everything from the machine aside from 1 monitor, mouse, keyboard and speakers and removed everything from startup aside from dropbox, Norton and Spybot (I didn't have Spybot or Norton runnning at startup when the problems started happening.

I thought I had it when I managed to encode one video file so I reset the BIOS to defaults again, having saved the old settings. Came back in and tried encoding another video file and had a random restart. Put the saved BIOS settings back in. Tried encoding again & had another restart.

I think I'll try another full reinstall again and make sure I wipe the drive this time.

 

[gregrocker]

Suggest you replace Norton with Microsoft Security Essentials and Spybot with Malwarebytes. This can solve performance problems such as yours.

Microsoft Security Essentials
Malwarebytes

 

[j1982a]

I don't have performance problems!

Norton is no longer the resource hog it used to be. Microsoft Security Essentials is a far inferior product than norton. I do have Malwarebytes instaled. Malwarebytes often spots things spybot doesn't and visa-versa.

Norton wasn't running on my computer when the problems first occurred. Spybot was installed but wasn't running in the background.

I did a full reinstall of Windows 7. That didn't help at all. Even with just the minimum devices attached to the machine.

My last attempt at fixing was to push up the DRAM voltage even higher than I'd risked before. I also discovered the windows power saving feature and changed that from balanced to high performance. I thought that 'feature' was only present on laptops!

Since then I haven't had any crashes and I am once again running with two monitors. I don't necessarily think it has anything to do with the windows power saving options but hey, it's working for now - I don't want to tinker with anything else!