Craig Posted May 24, 2000 Share Posted May 24, 2000 at random intervals. I haven't added, deleted or changed a thing for at least a week. This just started happening today, and has occured 5 times now...twice when I was just sitting here doing nothing (well, paperwork), twice when reading the forum and once when running MS Works. If anyone else has seen this, please let me know. Thanks in advance. oh, and nothing else is running except systray and explorer. Craig ------------------ Absolutely, without question (and by default) the BEST farmer on the forum! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuckHoliday Posted May 24, 2000 Share Posted May 24, 2000 power surge? - got an a/c kickin' in? next best guess: hardware/temperature - you did some overclocking? freq. change to graph card? Have fun DH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Pham Posted May 24, 2000 Share Posted May 24, 2000 Sounds like a heat problem, but try a virus check and swap out your video drivers if you've recently changed them. Most spontaneous reboots are heat releated though, and usually caused by overclocking. Other possible causes: A dying component(motherboard or CPU are most likely, but could be anything), a dying power supply and/or power supply cooling fan. If you're running W2K, it may be an incompatability with the OS and your hardware(I had a video card that would cause reboots in W2K when using the web. In fact, Battlefront.com would cause it at times)... Post more specifics about your computer setup and you'll probably get a better range of suggestions. ------------------ ---- Offical, certified poster of the 50,000th message. You can all stop posting now. I won. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dumbo Posted May 24, 2000 Share Posted May 24, 2000 Heat baby. Check the area around your box for obstructions and make sure your fan is working. Easy way to test is to take the case off yoru box and run it that way for a few days to see if it crashes. Also if you smoke near your computer you may need to clean some of the gunk from your fan area which can get clogged after exessive nearby smoking to cause the heat problems ,gawd help my lungs _dumbo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithai Posted May 24, 2000 Share Posted May 24, 2000 Just out of curiosity is it a mac or a pc. if it is a mac is it an imac? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted May 24, 2000 Author Share Posted May 24, 2000 Thanks guys...heat it is. It's located in my seed plant office where there's lots of grain dust buildup on everything. First time I've had the cover off in months and it was scary in there. In fact, some of the dust balls seemed to have eyes and teeth (looked a lot like Mr Peng's smileys, but fuzzier) Thanks again Craig [This message has been edited by Craig (edited 05-24-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peterk Posted May 25, 2000 Share Posted May 25, 2000 You guys helped Craig so fast maybe you could give me a hand too. My PC isn't rebooting but I've got a Voodoo 2 Monster card in my PC that's acting weird. Every so often - the screen will just freeze in any game that uses the 3D card and the hard-drive will be lit up for a second or 2 and then it'll "unjam" and work normally again. It's best described as a graphics "stutter". It's not too bad in CM but in a racing game it's enough to throw you totally off. Someone a long time ago told me that the graphics card was overheating and that I should stick a dedicated fan in, but I thought that sounded a little weird at the time. Any ideas???? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Pham Posted May 25, 2000 Share Posted May 25, 2000 If the hard drive light is always going on when the stutter happens, it's probably not heat related. You didn't say what OS you're using, or what speed CPU or how much ram, but I'm assuming it's windows(as I've had the same annoying stutter). Right click on My Computer on the desktop, select the tab that reads performance. Click the Virtual Memory button and select "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings." Pick whichever hard drive has the most free space(or the fastest if you know the drive speeds) and put the maximum and minimum memory to two or three times your physical memory. This prevents windows from resizing your virtual memory on the hard disk as you play. Click Ok, then click on the file system button and select Network Server from the typical role of the computer bar. Reboot and see if it helps. Alternatly, try defragmenting the disk and see if that helps. Also, if you're using a PCI sound card, it may be the sound card is eating resources that the game needs. Try setting the game to no sound or music and see if the problem persists. If none of these help a re-install of windows may be in order. And, if it's not a windows machine, ignore all the above. [This message has been edited by Pham (edited 05-24-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Moiety Posted May 25, 2000 Share Posted May 25, 2000 I have a P3 500 TNT2 V770. Should I be setting the Virtual Memory settings as you advised as well? or is it just for slower machines? Also, what does changing your computer role to "Network Server" do? Thanks for the advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kraut Posted May 25, 2000 Share Posted May 25, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Craig: at random intervals. I haven't added, deleted or changed a thing for at least a week. This just started happening today, and has occured 5 times now...twice when I was just sitting here doing nothing (well, paperwork), twice when reading the forum and once when running MS Works. If anyone else has seen this, please let me know. Thanks in advance. oh, and nothing else is running except systray and explorer. Craig <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I have been having the same problems ... random reboots. The thing is, they did not happen until i installed the CM demo. When i uninstalled the demo the reboots and lockups stopped, until i installed the game again. Now i've uninstalled the demo oncemore and all is fine. This is the only link i have to the problem. If my computer doesn't reboot or lockup in the next week or so i'm gonna have to assume CM has something to do with it. MK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Pham Posted May 25, 2000 Share Posted May 25, 2000 Changing the mode to network server uses slightly more ram, but stops many of the disk read/writes that normally occur under windows. The upside is that it can stop annoying hard drive accesses as it caches more stuff in memory, and the downside is that in the event of power loss for any reason you'll lose whatever wasn't saved manually recently. It's a toss up, but with a faster machine like yours, it probably won't improve things too much. The virutal memory is better, as it won't screw anything up. It just forces the virtual swap file to stay at a constant size(mine is around 256 megs) instead of having windows start it at the minimum size and then enlarge and contract it as needed(which can cause poor performance in games). If you've had your OS installed for around a year or more, it may be time to re-install it, as windows performance degrades over time. Or, like I said, could be your sound card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Moiety Posted May 26, 2000 Share Posted May 26, 2000 Interesting, thanks for the info Pham. - Adam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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