HI,

So, this is a strange one. I thought I'd post this while I'm looking at the problem, in case someone else has seen it before.

I'm looking at an old Dell PC, (Dimension E520) which randomly restarts itself, for no apparent reason. I've replaced the hard drive, and obviously re-installed Windows, which hasn't helped.

It doesn't restart itself if I boot into Safe Mode, which makes me think it's software related, though I haven't had a hard enough look at the problem to say that as a certainty.

I've reseated all of the internal components, and given the inside a clean, and I've installed a hw monitor, which reported low temps, so I don't think it's a heat related issue.

I also upgraded the BIOS to the latest version, so it's not that.

I'm going to install Linux, just to see how stable that is, as the owners of the PC have pretty much said that they're going to need a new one, and since I put one of my hard drives in there, it's not as if they'll lose anything.

Any ideas, anyone, while I'm looking at it?

TIA

Memory is the usual culprit, if it isn't a driver problem.


Safe mode probably means that certain banks of memory aren't being used, because only the basics are being loaded.


I've also had similar problems in the past. Memtest86 gave the memory a clean bill of health, but swapping out the memory anyway cured the random crashes.


I was at the point, where I was about to replace the motherboard, but had some spare RAM that I was going to use on another machine and decided to try it out, despite Memtest86 giving the memory a clean bill of health.


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I did have a look in my box of spares but couldn't find any suitable memory. By coincidence I have just started running memtest, on the off chance that it found something.

Given the age of the machine, I'm not even thinking about replacing the motherboard. If memtest doesn't find anything then I'll install Linux to try and prove one way or the other if it's a driver issue. If it works, great, they can use Linux or buy a new pc.

It's not like I'm charging them to look at it lol

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Slight update. It only restarts itself when I open up the Internet
Didn't matter if I try internet Explorer or chrome, it restarts.

Investigations are ongoing.

Edit to add: just tried starting chrome with the network cable unplugged. Still restarts.

Investigations are still ongoing.

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Ok, this is strange. Internet Explorer now seems to be playing nice, but Chrome is causing it to restart. Uninstalling Chrome more to see if it continues to play nice with ie.

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Curious... IE works when is run with no addons, but restarts the machine when run normally, but there are no add ons installed. Currently installing ie11 to see if that helps.

I'm sure this would be a lot easier if I felt better.

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The only thing I recall about IE messing up your installation was that Windows used it for rendering in some way, but that was yonks ago.

It's definitely not just windows at fault. It wouldn't even run Ubuntu in live cd mode. I've told the owner that it's banjoed but I'd be happy to find or build her a new one.

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Sounds like memory to me. That our the motherboard is on the way out.

have you disabled restart on all errors

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ ... dows-7.htm

this should bring up a blue screen with an error code when the system error happens again ...

I haven't got any replacement memory to test it with, and I did disable the auto restart. There were no blue screens and no messages. Just off and on again.

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