[audiovoid]

I have been having a problem with random reboots for the past year and a half.
I had a friend help me custom build my computer for both Gaming and Audio production.
My reboots happen mostly (but are not limited to) playing games. And even with the "Automatically Restart" setting disabled in system prefs.
It 1st began after installing Half Life 2 and has happened with every game since (Actually I DID play all the way through Far Cry without any problems when I 1st got my computer).
It's been suggested that it was a virus or that it is my PSU and Im really beginning to think that its the later because I've allready performed multiple Clean Installs of XP and the problem still occured.

I also let my tech friend borrow and try and troubleshoot my computer twice in the past and he tested the ram and hard drives but wasn't able to properly test the cpu or Psu I don't think. He DID get my system to a working state where he was able to run the game "Knights of the old republic" for 3 days straight (operated by a bot that ran around at random) without a single crash.
But then as soon as I got it back and plugged in my external drive the problem began again. Hence, the Virus suggestion. So I scanned (and did find and remove a few viruses) and apparently got my system cleaned. But
a wierd thing was that I was unable to perform a full system Virus scan in SafeMode without getting the BlueScreen of death. Tried both Kaspersky and Avast free.
I have two internal hard drives and if I unplugged the 2nd one then the scan would complete successfully. Strange.

(HD specs: an older 60gb Western Digital as my Master and a newer 200gb Seagate as the Slave.)


Since then I have (again) reformatted and reInstalled a fresh copy of windows and have only installed the very bare minimum of updated drivers and have not plugged any external soundcard (m-audioQuattro) or Ext. Hard drives in and at least now Im able to complete Virus scans in safe mode.
However, I checked in my Event viewer and am still getting all of the same error codes as I was before the OS install.
Dcom errors and
Service Control Manager errors.

Havn't had a chance to put my system to a stress test with HL2 since my last OS install but I have a gut feeling that I'm going to experience another random reboot at some point after I DO.

Ps. Another thing about the reboots while playing games.
It's not always frequent.

When it happens, it's always a Freeze Up (for about 2 seconds) and then an automatic reboot.

I've never had it happen when there's alot of action on the screen. It's always at a random quiet moment. And WIth every game I've tested.


PSS. I attatched a copy of my error log just incase anybody wanted to look at it.

Attached Files

•  Error_log_av.txt   201.78KB   78 downloads

Edited by audiovoid, 30 August 2007 - 08:52 PM.

[Advertisements]

Hi audiovoid...

It looks to me as if the PSU isn't providing enough power to run the machine under heavy load. External drives really take more power than you think and storage devices have priority as far as the machine is concerned.

You don't say how big your PSU is, but if you're going to be playing games AND running external USB peripherals, you'll want at least a 500W Power Supply.

wannabe1

[wannabe1]

Hi audiovoid...

It looks to me as if the PSU isn't providing enough power to run the machine under heavy load. External drives really take more power than you think and storage devices have priority as far as the machine is concerned.

You don't say how big your PSU is, but if you're going to be playing games AND running external USB peripherals, you'll want at least a 500W Power Supply.

wannabe1

[audiovoid]

Thanks for the quick reply.
My PSU is a 430 watt Unknown brand that came with my centurion case. And I've definately suspected it to be causing some of my problems. But the thing is that I was able to replicate alot of these problems without even having any of my external drives plugged in as well. Plus Both of my External drives and my Usb M-audio soundcard have their own Wall wart power adapters so dosn't that mean that my Computers PSU dosn't supply power to them? Also, one would think that the fact that my friend ran a video game on my system for 3 days straight without a reboot would point away from the PSU. But you never know, I guess.

Well I think that I managed to pinpoint, at least , part of the problem and that was with my "M-audio Quattro USB Soundcard". Because after reInstalling my OS this last time and leaving IT out of the equation I was able to finally complete a succesful Virus scan in Safe mode without getting a blue screen.

And Just to update my current system status. I put my machine to the test for many many hours straight last night without a single crash. I downloaded the DEMO of Bioshock (WoW!, By the Way) and played all the way through that. And then Fired up Half Life 2 and, even though I was getting some audio and video stutters here and there, the game never froze or rebooted the system. I'm stoked, but also not positive that I'm in the clear because my computer has been able to go for a while in the past without any random reboots. I'll definately need to stress test it for a bit longer and I'm sure that I'll really know for sure once I re install and play STALKER because I wasn't able to play that game for more than 20 minutes without it crashing out.

As for the errors concerning the Event Log that I attatched to my previous original message. I managed to pinpoint those to Safe mode.
The dcom error is just from firing up safemode.
And then the multiple Service Control Manager errors occur once I fire up Avast Antivirus in Safe Mode. I'm not sure why but at this point I don't think that it's a problem. Or at least I hope not.
This is what the errors look like:

8/30/2007 4:51:53 AM DCOM Error None 10005 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM AUDIOVOIDSTUDIO "DCOM got error ""This service cannot be started in Safe Mode "" attempting to start the service EventSystem with arguments """" in order to run the server:
{1BE1F766-5536-11D1-B726-00C04FB926AF}"
8/30/2007 2:18:40 AM Service Control Manager Error None 7026 N/A AUDIOVOIDSTUDIO The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
Aavmker4
AFD
AmdK8
aswTdi
BIOS
Fips
IPSec
MRxSmb
NetBIOS
NetBT
RasAcd
Rdbss
Tcpip

Edited by audiovoid, 31 August 2007 - 04:14 PM.

[dpham]

Thanks for the quick reply.
My PSU is a 430 watt Unknown brand that came with my centurion case. And I've definately suspected it to be causing some of my problems. But the thing is that I was able to replicate alot of these problems without even having any of my external drives plugged in as well. Plus Both of my External drives and my Usb M-audio soundcard have their own Wall wart power adapters so dosn't that mean that my Computers PSU dosn't supply power to them? Also, one would think that the fact that my friend ran a video game on my system for 3 days straight without a reboot would point away from the PSU. But you never know, I guess.

Well I think that I managed to pinpoint, at least , part of the problem and that was with my "M-audio Quattro USB Soundcard". Because after reInstalling my OS this last time and leaving IT out of the equation I was able to finally complete a succesful Virus scan in Safe mode without getting a blue screen.

And Just to update my current system status. I put my machine to the test for many many hours straight last night without a single crash. I downloaded the DEMO of Bioshock (WoW!, By the Way) and played all the way through that. And then Fired up Half Life 2 and, even though I was getting some audio and video stutters here and there, the game never froze or rebooted the system. I'm stoked, but also not positive that I'm in the clear because my computer has been able to go for a while in the past without any random reboots. I'll definately need to stress test it for a bit longer and I'm sure that I'll really know for sure once I re install and play STALKER because I wasn't able to play that game for more than 20 minutes without it crashing out.

As for the errors concerning the Event Log that I attatched to my previous original message. I managed to pinpoint those to Safe mode.
The dcom error is just from firing up safemode.
And then the multiple Service Control Manager errors occur once I fire up Avast Antivirus in Safe Mode. I'm not sure why but at this point I don't think that it's a problem. Or at least I hope not.
This is what the errors look like:

8/30/2007 4:51:53 AM DCOM Error None 10005 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM AUDIOVOIDSTUDIO "DCOM got error ""This service cannot be started in Safe Mode "" attempting to start the service EventSystem with arguments """" in order to run the server:
{1BE1F766-5536-11D1-B726-00C04FB926AF}"
8/30/2007 2:18:40 AM Service Control Manager Error None 7026 N/A AUDIOVOIDSTUDIO The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
Aavmker4
AFD
AmdK8
aswTdi
BIOS
Fips
IPSec
MRxSmb
NetBIOS
NetBT
RasAcd
Rdbss
Tcpip

I have a similiar problem and wondering if you find any SOLUTION yet??? Please share