Rebooting problem
 

Spontaneous, repeated rebots, sometimes 3 times a day, sometimes not for 3 days. No new hardware.

eMachines Desktop
Model: T2865

AMD Athlon? XP processor 2800

Using Windows Xp home.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks

when these things happen, you need to know what to analyze.

now, I'm not sure if the Event Viewer is in Home edition, but that's the first place I'd go.

Start - Settings - Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Event Viewer.

check for any System Events that happen when the computer decides to reboot.

you may find some info there that may require some googling/MS Knowledgebase searching.

it's a start, and hopefully enough.

oh, perhaps try a virus scan too, if you've not already.

Erratic re-boots are often power supply or memory problems.

Go into System Properties, click on the "Advanced" tab. Next, go down to Startup and Recovery and click on "Settings." Now, uncheck the box that says "Automatic Restart."

Now, you should get a blue screen that will provide some very useful information when the computer crashes.

The event viewer is in everything after Windows 2000. To check it, rt. click on My Computer and go to Manage. Click the + symbol next to Event Viewer and click on System. Anything in there out of the ordinary that you can tell? Red circles with white X's in them shouldn't be happening on a regular basis if there are a lot in there.

Is the machine in an enclosed cabinet of some sort? If so, it's quite possible it may be overheating. Even if it's not in an enclosure, does it have plenty of ventilation that you can tell?

Windows XP won't use memory that it thinks is bad, thus causing it to restart several times a day. What I'm saying here is that if Windows XP hits a bad area of ram whilst running, it will log it on shutdown. If it's a part of ram that Windows doesn't use upon booting, it will not use it while running. That way, it won't keep restarting because of ram that it has told itself not to use. This is why I don't think it's a memory problem.

I doubt it's a power supply problem, because _usually_ the power supply would just make the machine lockup. The power supply has no reign over the rest of the machine to tell it to reboot itself. Software controls hardware, not the other way around.

Thank you bendsley for helping me think straight.
Yes, a power supply problem would likely hang the machine.

In one of my Asus dual memory motherboards, I had two 512 ram chips installed.
(Win XP pro)
Lame encoder and some other software would reboot the machine untill I removed
one of the ram chips (not the other).

I'm getting the same problem usually followed up by a blue screen of death with a "IRQL NOT LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO" error that seems, from what I have read, that it is related to driver problems but I've had this problem for weeks and I'm no closer to a solution. Any help would be greatly apreciated.

That is the same problem that my friend had been getting on his computer. The weird thing is, it happened right after a reformat. So we reformatted again and no problems so far.....

Check the following

Power supply - have at least a 450wt
Bios - Update to latest version
Windows - Install the latest Service Packs
Check the RAM with a RAM utility
Unplug one PCI card at a time and see if it goes away.
Right click on My Computer, Choose Manage, and check the system log when it happens

-Mine was a voltage problem with the power supply wasn't enough.

How do I update the BIOS and can you suggest a RAM utility? Thank you in advance.

Memtest86 is a free program that tests memory.

Still, spontaneously rebooting? now I've got the error messages;

The HaxDoor virus may cause a "STOP 0x00000050" or "STOP 0x0000008e" error message

I get the 0x0000008e message,

When I try running a virus or spyware scan my system completely shuts down.
The HaxDoor virus removal instructions are a bit over my head wanting me to modify the registry which I've never done.

I get another error message;

Stop 0x0000000A or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Microsoft?s information on this very unclear since I had no new hardware or software(I still removed some that had been installed long before this problem)

I can't afford to take in to a Tech until next month.
Is there anything else I can do. Thanks for any insight.

Brew, are you safe-booting (F8) before those virus/spyware scans?

No, how exactly do you do that?

Restart and hit F8 a few times before the windows startup screens appear. You'll get a prompt for safe, safe with networking, etc. Choose safe and let'er rip.