[dba-Tech] Computer issues...

Jon

A couple of years ago I started having problems similar to 
your--unanticipated reboots. Would happen downloading email, then 
when opening/closing CD apps, sometimes during startups.

Send reports to MS and it would tell me it was a driver problem, but 
nothing more specific.

Ran Memtest many times, usually turned up negative, would even reboot 
while running Memtest.

Finally I realized it was the heat--happened mostly in summer and 
warmer days. Opened the case and vacuumed out the dust (a lot). Left 
the side off the box and aimed a small 6-inch personal fan against 
the box, turn it on when it seems warm, especially approaching 80F. 
Cleared the problem up immediately, and haven't had a similar 
shutdown in the couple of years since.

Can't help you with the login problem, tho.

Good luck,
Bob

At 3/19/2008 11:26 AM, Jim Lawrence wrote:
>Hi Jon:
>
>Have you checked the fans? If the fans are not working on the mother board
>or the main power supply fans is not working correctly and the heat sensor
>is set in your bios; that can cause you system to stop.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jon Tydda
>Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 6:31 AM
>To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues'
>Subject: [dba-Tech] Computer issues...
>
>Morning all, I'm having "issues" with my computer and wondered if anyone
>could come up with some ideas that I haven't thought of...
>
>For the last couple of days, my pc has been randomly restarting itself while
>I've been using it, which is kind of annoying. Once when it restarted it
>showed me the "Windows has recovered from a serious error" message, so I
>clicked on the box and it told me that I had an issue with a driver. Now the
>only thing I've been using recently that would need a driver that I've not
>used in a while is my webcam, so I went to the creative website, and updated
>the driver (incidentally, they've got a great widget that searches your pc
>for hardware, and shows you the relevant drivers and utilities for it all,
>so that's my tip of the day!).
>
>Downloaded and installed those, next day it was doing it again. I figured
>that the prolem might be with MSN Messenger, so I switched back to Trillian
>last night, and all was well. So I thought that seeing as how I have the day
>off today, I'd try and work out what the problem is with MSN. Except today,
>I turn the computer on, and I can't get into anything other than safe mode.
>The welcome screen appears, I choose a username, it starts to log me in,
>shows my desktop, and then logs me out. Whichever account I use, I can't do
>anything. Ctrl-alt-del doesn't work fast enough to bring up a process list.
>
>So I started in Safe Mode, ran Trojan Hunter, Counter Spy, Ad-Aware 2007, a
>full AVG Virus Scan, Spybot and a Panda ActiveScan. Trojan Hunter found
>something in my download folder, and removed it, all the others were clean
>apart from the occasional cookie, which I removed.
>
>Started again, still no luck. Back to safe mode, disk cleanup, CCleaner,
>Defrag. Nothing. Tried getting into Windows Update too, to see if there's
>anything that I'm missing, but it keeps coming up with errors. Belarc says
>I'm not missing anything anyway...
>
>So I'm stuck in safe mode - with no firewall, anti-virus or resident
>anti-spyware... Any ideas? :-)
>
>I'm running XP Pro SP2, nothing special...
>
>Jon


Bob Geldart             BGeldart at verizon.net
Maynard, MA