Constantly resetting PC

[vertigo]

My PC keeps resetting when unattended, not sure why but I'm about 99.9% certain there's no virus or trojan allowing someone to do it.
Lately it's been happening while the PC was unattended (downloading or whatever) but it alsp happened when the comp wasn't downloading and I'd just gone out to the shop for a few minutes.
It's not overheating, my PC halts on the bios screen so I can choose which OS to boot to, and it says CPU heat it 58 degrees so well within the safe range.
Possibly related but might not be is that I often get a BSOD when my comp's having to do a lot of work, often it's IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL, but sometimes it varies between MEMORY_MANAGEMENT and something else.
I've heard that this is due to incompatible hardware but can't narrow it down to anything as I don't have spare parts to test with it. I've used a boot disk memory checker and my RAM is fine. I put this comp together from clearance parts but as far as I know except for the graphics card they are new. Could a fairly recently added DVDRAM drive be the cause of this? If so, any idea what it's conflicting with?

Spec: Athlon 1600+, 512MB RAM, Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 (made by WinGate)

[oblivion_6]

EDIT: Doh didnt notice you already said your core temp

Is your PSU a decent one? could be your pulling too much power out of it and its finding it hard to cope possibly?

[babs]

The only way you can tell what's sharing IRQs will be through something like device manager, but with ACPI now it shouldn't really matter. One thing to check is how close the RAM is seated to the CPU. The CPU @ 58 degrees, while safe, is quite hot, and there's a chance the RAM is getting too hot.

But as you say, it happens under very little load (downloading) and it shouldn't be an issue. I'd try reseating the RAM in different slots if possible (you have no idea how fussy some systems are with this), the same with any PCI cards (as these may be sharing IRQs). Finally I'd look at the motherboard and/or PSU. The PSU shouldn't give you BSOD errors, those are normally reserved for RAM/Overheating these days, but it could be a coincidence.

[MartyG]

I was having problem with my work machine BSODing in Win2000, which I had to put down to registry problems when it originally looked like it was memory related. After running Registry Mechanic, which reported hundreds of problems, I haven't had an issue since. Might be worth giving that a go.

[vertigo]

Righto, I'll try out Registry Mechanic and reseating the RAM so that it's a bit less near wherever the heat might be.
It wasn't me that actually put the machine physically together, so yeh there might be air flow problems. I have looked inside it before and it's all seemingly fine though.

babs: I find that progs like eMule take up a fair amount of memory load actually. My comp takes a while to open apps if eMule is open, which is why I prefer to leave it on overnight instead of when I actually want to use the comp, but lately it's seeming to reset every night instead of downloading me anything, which sucks.

I'll also try disconnecting the DVD-RAM drive anyway and see if that sorts the problem out. If it's that it's annoying coz this drive's really good, in which case I'll have to work out what it's incompatible with.

[Hohum]

Try updating your network card driver. Emule will expose any flaky drivers in that area due to the large amount of network connections and traffic it deals with. You will get system 'pauses' and BSODs (IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL that you mentioned will be the error) if the NIC driver isn't up to scratch.

However, I don't know if that is your problem, as you say it also happens when the PC is not doing anything. I'd give it a try though.

[vertigo]

I just have a broadband modem that connects directly to my comp via USB.
Will try updating the driver for that though.

I HATE PCs!

[bob123]

i used to get a similar message when i first inserted a TV card into the PC. It happened less often when i updated its driver. dunno if you have a tv card?...

[erhgiez]

My computer did this as well, I had a TV card, but no matter what pc world did they cudnt fix the problem so i replaced it, the really annoying thing is that it can be so many things i just couldnt be bothered. but go into device manager in control panel, and then event log and see what error number it is when its reset, that may help you narrowing down what the problem is.

[vertigo]

After running Registry Mechanic, which reported hundreds of problems, I haven't had an issue since. Might be worth giving that a go.

485 fixed errors later....
An hour in and it's fine, going to go and have a shower now and see if the comp's still on when I get back, usually it only took that long before for it to crash.

[vertigo]

It was doing alright last night for ages then I tried to do something and it chugged a bit and crashed with a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGING_AREA blue screen. It's a lot more well behaved than before though and I'll check out the registry again tonight to see if it's just creating errors in itself over and over.
I've left it on this morning to encode a DVD, will find out when I get home at 6 if it's done it. Hopefully it has done because we want to watch it tonight.

[eastyy]

I had this type of problem several times both different reasons

1st time it was because the CPU was overheating
2nd time it was because my power supply was not enough

[PH]

Still having problems Vertigo?

I was having similar BSOD with IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL problems. Someone on another forum told me to try disabling any serial and parallel ports via the mainboard bios (obviously don't do this if you need them enabled.) That was about 3 weeks ago and i haven't had a single problem since. Might be worth a try if your problem is persisting.

[vertigo]

Actually, I'm going to have a look at shifting some of the memory around inside and checking that the fan's going ok, although on boot the bios says it's going 5600rpm, so that should be ok. Otherwise I'll move my PCI fan up to the top slot.
I think the main problem is that the AGP gfx card is directly next to the CPU, and it's probably contributing to the heat issues. I'm going to move the RAM as far away from the CPU as possible too, and see if any of this fixes it.
I only have the parallel port enabled for nefarious reasons, so I may well disable it, although I don't think that had any effect last time because it was doing this before I enabled the port.
Best piece of advice I've had was to use registry mechanic. I had about 450 errors, fixed them all, rebooted, fixed the vast majority of the problems.