my pc keeps rebooting itself?

[burno]

I've had my pc for about a year and half and it has so far been a very stable machine. However, the other day, after exiting a game, the machine froze then rebooted itself. Now I can only get into windows using safe mode.
I get a brief blue screen with writing on that disappears so quickly I can't read the message.

Sometimes the colour is weird on the monitor and sometimes, although not in safe mode, the monitor will shut down saying - no message, going to sleep? Even though the hard drive is still running, and then the monitor will start up again and I can see windows is still running but as soon as I click an icon, the monitor will shut down again?

Now I've checked for viruses and malware and nothing came up. I haven't loaded any new programs recently.

Can anybody help?

[Mac]

Try re-seating your RAM modules and other cards first of all, and blow out all the dust and then make sure that the temperatures aren't too high.

Run MemTest86 on your RAM overnight and run the drive manufacturer's drive diagnostic diskette over the drive.

Click on the link below for more info.

[burno]

THanks Mac,

I'll look into this now and let ya know how it goes.

Cheers

[Neil]

In safe mode go in your display options > settings. Can't quite remember how you do this but move the resolution slider. It shouldn't move off 640x480 but that's ok. Now press apply and it should ask if you want to start Windows next time using failsafe monitor settings. Click yes. Now try rebooting.

Then go back to display and reset it to a resolution more appropriate, such as 800x600 or 1024x768.

Hopefully your monitor should now work. But for your crashing problem...

1. Update direct-x
2. Update/reinstall graphics drivers
3. If still not working, then go to display > settings advanced, troubleshoot and move the hardware acceleration down a slot each time until crashes stop. Unfortunately lowering this slider may reduce game performance or stop them running at all, but hopefully should prevent crashes for the meantime.

Let us know what happens.

[burno70]

ok, done all the re-seating and dusting stuff - no change.

Have scanned the hard drive and no probs with that.

Couldn 't get the memtest programme to work though? I followed the instruction and unzipped it to make the boot cd but it's just ignored when I swich the pc on or reboot?

Any Ideas?

[Fed]

You will need to set your cdrom as the first boot device in bios then re-boot with the cd in the drive.

Also check your device manager for device driver problems.

[burno]

Thanks Fed,
the CD drive is already the first boot device?

I do have a conflict in device manager which I hadn't noticed before. One is with my audio interface the other is an unknown ? device?

Not sure if this helps but on the odd occaision when my pc boots up correctly, in nomal mode, in windows xp my audio is fine, however when I have to reboot and go in, in safe mode, I have no audio?

[Fed]

Uninstall the problem devices in your Device Manager, re-boot and allow XP to re-detect, you may need drivers for this.
Do them one at a time.

Are you sure you downloaded the correct memtest, that memtest site can be confusing.