Randomly reboots, but fails to reboot...

[RandyTurner]

Hello all.

I have been reading these boards for a while, but finally registered because I'm at my wit's end here. I built a custom PC a couple of weeks ago, and I keep going upstairs to find it sitting there with a black screen with white text that reads something along the lines of "Can't find bootable media, insert bootable media" The only way to get it to boot, is go into BIOS, mess with the boot order, and reset it. Then it boots with the "was not shut down properly" prompt. I have Windows on a 360GB OCZ Vertex2 SSD. The fact that once it tries to restart, it cant see the OS drive leads me to believe the drive is shutting down. I ran a SMART check on the drive, and it appears to be in good health. I have BIOS set to AHCI. I have my power scheme set to NEVER turn hard disk off, and NEVER go to sleep. This happened with the first install, so I carefully reinstalled windows being sure to MANUALLY install all up to date drivers for the chipset and whatnot. That lasted perfectly for about 2 weeks, then, yesterday, I come home to see that screen again...

HELP!!!

 

[Mellon Head]

Welcome to the forums.

It could be a couple of things, and both might be simple. Let's deal with the boot order first. It sounds like the BIOS is looking at the DVD drive, or for a flash drive to boot from, instead of your hard disk. I assume that when you are resetting the boot order , you are saving the BIOS parameters. My BIOS has a field (in addition to the boot order) to name the primary boot drive. It may be something as simple as that. Look around in your BIOS and see if you have something similar.

As for the spontaneous reboots, it might be a memory error. Often when you get a memory fault it can simply reboot the machine rather than going to the BSOD. Use Memtest86+ for about 8 passes and test your memory:

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

It may be that the timings are off, or the memory voltage isn't enough. Something simple.

Try those things and see what happens.