Curious about sporadic Crashes, Error Messages

Hello,

For some reason, after weeks or months of a smoothly operating PC, it will suddenly start crashing and rebooting at the mot unexpectd time, or just as suddenly start spewing forth error messages and closing programs.

IE7 has caused a problem and must close, Window's Live messenger has caused a problem and must close............and on and on

OR

In the middle of reading an e-mail, and BAM! Everything goes black! The pc has gone blank and is rebooting. Or surfing and it crashes, or just sitting here and I'm not even using the PC, and suddenly it is crashing.

Either one or both of these events will occur out of the blue. And it will go on for days. Sometimes after a couple days time, it will end and then it's smooth sailing again. And then at times it doesn't correct it's self, and I will have roll back to an earlier restore point.

What bothers me about all this happening is that I can't believe it's good for my computer, but I am at a loss as to how to prevent it from happening in the first place.

A minor secondary problem is that I can't keep my settings in some areas. I have chosen to have error reporting turned on, but I have to reset that every time my computer reboots, whether I reboot deliberately or it happens to reboot it's self. I am owner/administrator, but my settings don't stick.

Any ideas? I can go on without the answer, but I would feel much better if I knew what caused these problems and could stop it from happening in the future.

Cordially,
Sandie

 

Hi, Sandie.

One possibility for random shutdown/reboots is a flaky power supply unit (PSU). On more than one occasion in the past, I have had similar shutdown issues occur for no apparent reason and replacing the PSU solved my problem.

If you have a known-good PSU you can swap with (that has enough power to handle all your hardware requirements), it is relatively easy to swap (with the power unplugged from the wall, of course) and test. Takes about 15 minutes to do.

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Event Viewer might provide some clues.

Instructions About How to Access and Use "Event Viewer ":

• Click Start.
• Right-click My Computer.
• Select "Manage" to open the "Computer Management" window.
  (Event Viewer will be displayed under the "System Tools" directory item.)
• Expand "Event Viewer" and then select "Application ", "Security ", and "System" to view the logs.
• Look for "error" events that occurred around the time your problem occurred. These events will be displayed as icons with either a white X on red background or a black exclamation point on yellow background. In the security section of Event Viewer, events of possible concern are ones that display a padlock icon instead of a key icon.
• Double-click on an individual event to open the "Event Properties" window which shows details about the event.
  • You can use the up/down arrow buttons in the "Event Properties" window to move your focus to other events in the list.
  • Use the button below the up/down arrows to copy the details for an event to your clipboard for pasting elsewhere.
  • Click on the "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp" link in the "Event Properties" window to view more information from Microsoft about the event.

Alternatively, Event Viewer may be accessed as follows.

• Click Start > Run...
• Type [FONT= "Courier New"][SIZE= "3"]eventvwr.msc[/SIZE][/FONT] in the "Open:" field.
• Click the OK button.

==========

You may have a driver issue somewhere.

If you go into Device Manager, do you have any "issues" (such as exclamation point icons or question mark icons) reported there? If so, what are they? (DISCLAIMER: These issues would be the things I would tackle first anyway. Other people here may advise you to proceed otherwise.)

Device Manager can be accessed as follows:

• While holding down your Windows Key, press your Pause Key to bring up your "System Properties" window.
• Click on the Hardware tab.
• Click on the Device Manager button.

I'm guessing you may be experiencing "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD) errors/crashes that produce the famous blue screen or cause an automatic reboot (depending on how one's system is configured). If so, consider following the instructions in this link to provide more information about the particular BSOD crash errors you experience.

If you copy/paste that information here, you have a better chance of getting help that is specific to your problem.

===============

If you find your system won't let you install and run the applications in the link I just provided, then your 2nd-best option might be to see if we can at least get your machine to display a "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD) instead of automatically rebooting. Then, when a BSOD appears, copy down the exact error code information and provide that here. You'll have to write the information on paper. (I don't think there is a convenient way to simply print the info or save it to disk.) It might not be enough information to go on but it might be worth a shot.

Here is how to configure your machine to display a BSOD for a system crash instead of automatically rebooting.

• While holding down your Windows Key, press your Pause Key to bring up your "System Properties" window.
• Click the Advanced tab.
• In the Startup and Recovery section, click the Settings button.

Make the following settings in the "System failure" section:

1. Check mark: "Write an event to the system log "
2. Check mark: "Send an administrative alert "
3. NO check mark: "Automatically restart "
   (You should be able to read your BSOD screens after making this setting.)
4. Write debugging information: Kernel memory dump
5. Dump file: %SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP
6. Check mark: "Overwrite any existing file "
7. Click on the OK buttons until you are back to your normal screen.

If you want to keep backups of your MEMORY.DMP files, then (after each BSOD crash) rename the MEMORY.DMP file (keeping the .DMP extenstion) and/or copy the c:\MEMORY.DMP file to another folder and rename as desired (keeping the .DMP extension).

The next time your system crashes, you should see a BSOD with error information. If you post that exact information here, someone might have an idea about how to proceed.