Problem with older system P4PE

I'm experiencing random reboots. I've been through this before so I
know the routine but perhaps there are some other options to resolve
it.

First, my psu is a quality (Vantec 420W), it's powering the board, a
2.4 P4, 3 hard drives and an older ATI Radeon 9000 (AGP, 64MB
memory). I do not have a multi meter to check the PSU, however I'm
running the shareware "SpeedFan" which is current logging all the
voltage, fans speeds and temperatures. Nothing in these logs are
showing and weird drops or changes.

I've also ran memtest on the memory and everything appears fine from
those tests.

The problems started when I upgraded XP to SP2. Till then I had good
system stability. I'm trying to avoid doing a total re-install .
I've installed all the proper drives, including the Intel inf's and
accelerator for the chipsets. I did have a duplicate spare of the
video card and replaced that to see if it would make a difference. It
did not. The reboots seem to happen haphazardly. Sometimes while I'm
working in an application, sometimes on it's own when no apps are
really running.

I know hardware problems are usually the culprit but the fact that
they weren't happening till I did the SP2 upgrade makes me lean in
that direction.

Any suggestions ?
TIA
S

On Aug 1, 6:14 pm, "sambi...@gmail.com" <sambi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm experiencing random reboots. I've been through this before so I
> know the routine but perhaps there are some other options to resolve
> it.
>
> First, my psu is a quality (Vantec 420W), it's powering the board, a
> 2.4 P4, 3 hard drives and an older ATI Radeon 9000 (AGP, 64MB
> memory). I do not have a multi meter to check the PSU, however I'm
> running the shareware "SpeedFan" which is current logging all the
> voltage, fans speeds and temperatures. Nothing in these logs are
> showing and weird drops or changes.
>
> I've also ran memtest on the memory and everything appears fine from
> those tests.
>
> The problems started when I upgraded XP to SP2. Till then I had good
> system stability. I'm trying to avoid doing a total re-install .
> I've installed all the proper drives, including the Intel inf's and
> accelerator for the chipsets. I did have a duplicate spare of the
> video card and replaced that to see if it would make a difference. It
> did not. The reboots seem to happen haphazardly. Sometimes while I'm
> working in an application, sometimes on it's own when no apps are
> really running.
>
> I know hardware problems are usually the culprit but the fact that
> they weren't happening till I did the SP2 upgrade makes me lean in
> that direction.
>
> Any suggestions ?
> TIA
> S

I should also mention that the SP2 upgrade was done as a full
install. So I don't have the option of backing out of it.
S

wrote:
> I'm experiencing random reboots. I've been through this before so I
> know the routine but perhaps there are some other options to resolve
> it.
>
> First, my psu is a quality (Vantec 420W), it's powering the board, a
> 2.4 P4, 3 hard drives and an older ATI Radeon 9000 (AGP, 64MB
> memory). I do not have a multi meter to check the PSU, however I'm
> running the shareware "SpeedFan" which is current logging all the
> voltage, fans speeds and temperatures. Nothing in these logs are
> showing and weird drops or changes.
>
> I've also ran memtest on the memory and everything appears fine from
> those tests.
>
> The problems started when I upgraded XP to SP2. Till then I had good
> system stability. I'm trying to avoid doing a total re-install .
> I've installed all the proper drives, including the Intel inf's and
> accelerator for the chipsets. I did have a duplicate spare of the
> video card and replaced that to see if it would make a difference. It
> did not. The reboots seem to happen haphazardly. Sometimes while I'm
> working in an application, sometimes on it's own when no apps are
> really running.
>
> I know hardware problems are usually the culprit but the fact that
> they weren't happening till I did the SP2 upgrade makes me lean in
> that direction.
>
> Any suggestions ?
> TIA
> S
>
I recently had a P5P800 replaced by ASUS as one of the capacitors was
noticeably bulging at the top. Maybe a quick visual inspection will
turn up a problem. In my case it was very simple as the side of the
case is a window and I noticed the cap while waiting for the computer to
recover from one of it's random reboots.

Did you go to Control Panel>System>Advanced>
Startup and Recovery and untick Automatically
restart? This should give you BSODs instead of
reboots. If it still does instant reboots, then that
points to a hardware related fault. If you could do
a lengthy thorough memtest without problems that
would indicate the basic hardware is sound, and the
instability is definitely related to running XP.

The SP2 update may have created an incompatibility
with an existing device driver. Have you tried
installing the latest Intel inf for the 845 chipset?
One thing SP2 provides is full support for USB2,
so there may be a conflict with the Asus USB2
driver. Another area of possible conflict may be
with the Intel Application Accelerator. It's not
required for XP SP2. Unfortunately the only way
to fully remove IAA is to reinstall.

.. Unfortunately the only way
> to fully remove IAA is to reinstall.

You may be able to sufficiently remove IAA through
the Control Panel>Remove programs route. IAA has
reportedly not been updated since 2002, so it will
not be SP2 compatible. The IAA driver IdeChnDr.sys
has been reported to cause BSODs with XP SP2.

On Aug 1, 8:26 pm, "Ian D" <tau...@nowhere.com> wrote:
> . Unfortunately the only way
>
> > to fully remove IAA is to reinstall.
>
> You may be able to sufficiently remove IAA through
> the Control Panel>Remove programs route. IAA has
> reportedly not been updated since 2002, so it will
> not be SP2 compatible. The IAA driver IdeChnDr.sys
> has been reported to cause BSODs with XP SP2.

One odd system error logged in event viewer that keeps coming up is:

The ASInsHelp service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.

I looked this up and it seemed ASInsHelp is related to an Asus
utility. Yet I didn't install this utility with the SP2 install. Why
would it be showing up. Prior to Sp2, I was using Probe (v1 I
believe). Actually I did not use any of the Asus drivers after the
install.

S

On Aug 1, 8:07 pm, "Ian D" <tau...@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Did you go to Control Panel>System>Advanced>
> Startup and Recovery and untick Automatically
> restart? This should give you BSODs instead of
> reboots. If it still does instant reboots, then that
> points to a hardware related fault. If you could do
> a lengthy thorough memtest without problems that
> would indicate the basic hardware is sound, and the
> instability is definitely related to running XP.

Yes I did disable Auto restarts , and there are no BSOD's. So if I'm
reading your response correctly, even though it's still a possible
XP related issue, XP wouldn't throw a BSOD / Stop error ? Or nothing
in the event viewer ?

> The SP2 update may have created an incompatibility
> with an existing device driver. Have you tried
> installing the latest Intel inf for the 845 chipset?
> One thing SP2 provides is full support for USB2,
> so there may be a conflict with the Asus USB2
> driver.

I didn't use any Asus drivers or would the USB2 conflict come from the
bios ?

S

Another possibility I'm considering is a power / electrical issue. I
noticed the incidence of reboots over the weekend was higher then
during the week. I also noticed the last few days (since Monday) that
the reboots start at around 10am - 11am. Perhaps it's just
coincidental. However the system stays on all night and in the
morning I can do quite a bit of work without any reboots. Now I do
have the computer plugged into a surge protector and I'm not seeing
any indication from other appliances flickering or going off at the
time of the reboot. So I'm wondering if even a small drop in current
could throw the pc into a reboot even though my router, modem and such
are not going off. I guess a UPC might be in order to test this
theory.

S

wrote:
> I'm experiencing random reboots. I've been through this before so I
> know the routine but perhaps there are some other options to resolve
> it.
>
> First, my psu is a quality (Vantec 420W), it's powering the board, a
> 2.4 P4, 3 hard drives and an older ATI Radeon 9000 (AGP, 64MB
> memory). I do not have a multi meter to check the PSU, however I'm
> running the shareware "SpeedFan" which is current logging all the
> voltage, fans speeds and temperatures. Nothing in these logs are
> showing and weird drops or changes.
>
> I've also ran memtest on the memory and everything appears fine from
> those tests.
>
> The problems started when I upgraded XP to SP2. Till then I had good
> system stability. I'm trying to avoid doing a total re-install .
> I've installed all the proper drives, including the Intel inf's and
> accelerator for the chipsets. I did have a duplicate spare of the
> video card and replaced that to see if it would make a difference. It
> did not. The reboots seem to happen haphazardly. Sometimes while I'm
> working in an application, sometimes on it's own when no apps are
> really running.
>
> I know hardware problems are usually the culprit but the fact that
> they weren't happening till I did the SP2 upgrade makes me lean in
> that direction.
>
> Any suggestions ?
> TIA
> S

I think Michael is correct. Sounds exactly like a bad electrolytic
capacitor(s). Carefully inspect them, especially near the CPU socket.
Any bulging on the side, on top, or discoloration on top of, or anywhere
near the capacitors (sides and at the bottom). The discoloration is the
electrolyte leaking from the cap and is usually light to dark brown in
color.

> I think Michael is correct. Sounds exactly like a bad electrolytic
> capacitor(s). Carefully inspect them, especially near the CPU socket. Any
> bulging on the side, on top, or discoloration on top of, or anywhere near
> the capacitors (sides and at the bottom). The discoloration is the
> electrolyte leaking from the cap and is usually light to dark brown in
> color.
>

If this was a low quality motherboard I would agree, but this is an
Asus P4PE, a high quality reliable board. I have a P4PE that has
run flawlessly for almost 5 years. Not a sign of bulging caps, in
fact the caps are the quality Japanese makes - Nichicon, etc. I
had an Abit SE6 in which about 60% of the caps were bulging
or leaking after less than 2 years. I turfed that board and used
the opportunity to upgrade to the P4PE with a 2.4 GHz
Northwood.

The OP says the problems started after installing SP2 and he
never mentioned SP1, so I assume he went directly from XP
2002 (no SP). Under the hood, SP2 is basically a new OS so I
think an older device driver is not compatible with SP2. Or,
possibly by coincidence his PS started acting up at the
same time.