rpinder@phad.hsc.usc.edu (Rich Pinder) (04/17/91)
Have a curious problem that has showed up on a windows machine I 'support'
for my boss (I'm not a heavy windows user).
At no particularily reproducable time the system does a re-boot. Happens
!only! within windows applications. System is a Northgate 25 mhz 486.
The system ran fine for a couple of months before this. I suspected power
supply problem, and Northgate shipped us a new one, but it didn't relieve
the problem.
Any ideas?
..... on another issue....
He also gets 'unrecoverable application error' when exiting different
programs (winword, excel, etc), and bumps you out to dos. It happens just
before you get the prompt 'do you want to save current file'.
any ideas on this one??
thanks for your help
Rich Pinder
USC School of Medicine
(213) 342-1640
rpinder@usc.edu
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Steve J White) (04/17/91)
In article <31988@usc> rpinder@phad.hsc.usc.edu (Rich Pinder) writes: > >Have a curious problem that has showed up on a windows machine I 'support' >for my boss (I'm not a heavy windows user). > >At no particularily reproducable time the system does a re-boot. Happens >!only! within windows applications. System is a Northgate 25 mhz 486. > >The system ran fine for a couple of months before this. I suspected power >supply problem, and Northgate shipped us a new one, but it didn't relieve >the problem. > >Any ideas? > Rich, I have experienced the same type of problem. My situation has to do with an inconsistency in RAM speeds. I found out that ONE of my RAM chips is only a 120ns chip while the rest are 100ns. By moving the chip around I found I could change the area of the trouble occurrences. Go figure. I replaced the 120ns chip with a 80ns chip. Now the truoble is random 'main board parity errors.' Go figure. It seems all related to memory so I'm upgrading my system memory to 2.5Mb. with 2 rows of 1Mb. chips and 2 rows of 256Kb. chips. It may even be all related to when I installed new system BIOS after installing a new 40Mb. EDI hard-disk. It just seems to never end... - steve -- "Laugh and the world laughs with you... | All disclaimers apply... snore and you sleep alone." | except my own, of course. - anonymous fortune cookie thingy | *** Steve J. White *** <<< aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu >>>
bjorn@valhalla.esd.sgi.com (Bjorn Lindstrom) (04/17/91)
I have had this problem occur, but not only in windows, but ANY application... It got so bad that sometimes it was a RACE to see how much I could get in and saved before the impending reboot hit... ... turned out to be dust in the case ... blew out the dust and the problem never occured again! However, that may not be the case for you. I know of this happening on an AT right this time as well... and look forward to finding out possible causes. This particular setup is 12mhz. AT running Hercules with an IDE drive, 4 meg ram, and WINWORD. Also, sometimes when exiting windows, it bombs with a divide overflow error. Bjorn (OWWW! ... damn mouse ... )
akm@obelix.cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal) (04/17/91)
In article <11085@uwm.edu> aragorn@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Steve J White) writes: >In article <31988@usc> rpinder@phad.hsc.usc.edu (Rich Pinder) writes: >>At no particularily reproducable time the system does a re-boot. Happens >>!only! within windows applications. System is a Northgate 25 mhz 486. > I have experienced the same type of problem. My situation has to do with >an inconsistency in RAM speeds. I found out that ONE of my RAM chips is >only a 120ns chip while the rest are 100ns. By moving the chip around I >found I could change the area of the trouble occurrences. Go figure. I >replaced the 120ns chip with a 80ns chip. Now the truoble is random 'main >board parity errors.' Go figure. It seems all related to memory so I'm >upgrading my system memory to 2.5Mb. with 2 rows of 1Mb. chips and 2 rows of >256Kb. chips. It may even be all related to when I installed new system >BIOS after installing a new 40Mb. EDI hard-disk. It just seems to never >end... I've also been having similar problems. I recently went from 4 mb of good SIMMS to 8 mb, in which the second 4 mb are suspect. Since then I've been having a host of parity errors. It seems to me that sometimes when I have a parity error (which seems to be always after 4864K, i.e, extended memory), windows undergoes a reboot. Could be that the parity error causes some sort of protection fault... I've been running my machine with parity turned off for a couple of weeks now, and this has caused applications to die unexpectedly, presumably when they hit the bad bit in a critical area. For example, I've had the experience of trying to start word, having its original dialog box come up, and then die... Like Steve said, go figure... I also have the problem that I don't know which one of the four simms is bad... so I don't know which one to replace... kartik -- Anant Kartik Mithal akm@cs.uoregon.edu Research Assistant, (503)346-4408 (msgs) Department of Computer Science, (503)346-3989 (direct) University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1202
rschmidt@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (roy schmidt) (04/19/91)
A guy here recently bought a Gateway that did similar things. He found that the problem was the "Reset" switch had a short in it, so every once in a while a random vibration would cause the short to take his work on a one-way trip to Hell :-(. He suspected other things just because he was doing certain things when the reboots occurred. If you are heavy Windows user, then odds are that you will be using Windows when the random reboot occurs. Happy troubleshooting! -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roy Schmidt | #include <disclaimer.h> Indiana University | /* They are _my_ thoughts, and you can't Graduate School of Business | have them, so there! */