Well, Just like to say this forum has helped me out alot and like to say thanks for all the help I got from this board on getting my A+. Now I am onto Mcse.

In any event I have a desktop PIII 350 MHZ that likes to reboot itself almost all the time with out any assistance. I was wondering what your guys take is on this.

I am down to the fan cooling the P3/ The power supply /bad ram? Any thoughts

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Check the temperature of your CPU and motherboard. Sounds like you are running hot to me.

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Does it happen is safe mode? If not take a long hard look at your drivers.

Look at what your doing when it occurrs. Are you on the internet? Does it reboot when you open an app or a web page? Look in Device manager. any bangs? Have you added any new hardware or drivers since this started?

When Windows detects a hardware conflict and cannot load the driver properly, it will reboot itself. It's a built in safety feature. Stops it from corrupting the entire OS or damaging hardware and /or drivers.

Go into MSconfig. Type it at the run line. Put the machine in selective startup. Uncheck all the boxes. Restart the machine. See if it still wants to reboot. Most likely not.

Go back into MSconfig and check the first two boxes. They should be the Config.sys and autoexec.bat. Restart the machine.
Watch it for a while. Does it reboot on it's own? You got a bad line in one of the two files. This is called linear trouble shooting by the way.

Go to the next file in the MSconfig. Check the box and restart. Do this till all the boxes are rechecked except the last one (startup menu). Still does a reboot on its own?

Once you get to the start up menu, recheck the box. Go to the tab that says startup. Uncheck all the boxes. If your like everyone else you got a ton of crap running in your startup. Disable your Brittney Spears screen saver and any backgrounds that you have running.

Restart the machine. Go into MSconfig. Go to the startup tab again. Uncheck all the boxes then recheck the first five boxes. Restart the PC. Take note of the last box you checked. Uncheck any of these five that you can live without.
Restart the machine. Does it reboot? If not go to the next five. If it does....uncheck the first five and recheck two at a time. Restart the box. Keep doing this till the box reboots. Once you find the culprit.... disable it. If that does not work, do the same in Device manager. Hit the window and the pause break button on the keyboard to bring it up.

One more thing. If your refresh rate is too hot it can cause some problems with the video driver. Try using the adapter default. Hope your not using optimal.

Right click on the desktop, go to properties, settings, advanced, adapter and check the refresh rate. Select adapter default.

Do you have the right video driver installed? Uninstall and reinstall the driver and see if that fixes tha problem.

Did you mess around with the BIOS settings? Did you select optimal thinking you were going to get something for nothing? Wrong! There is no such thing as optimal settings for anything when it comes to computers. If you did play with the BIOS settings, go back and reset the BIOS defaults, save and exit.
Hope this helps.

[This message has been edited by Phantom309 (edited 09-09-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Phantom309 (edited 09-09-2000).]

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power supply - check it

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Thanks guys for all the help. SOme of the things you mentioned I have thought of as the culprit and just wanted to hear what some of the personal experiences might be with this prob.

Well I can't say it is a conflict just because I have tried different OS's on different hard drives even doing a clean install of win98 and nt.

It doesn't seem to be a powersupply issue because I swapped powersupplies to see what would happen. SAME THING

IT can't be RAM because my system souldn't boot after the posts.

THe thing I think it might be is the CPU is getting extremely hot and reboots itself. The reboot won't happen the first hour or so but once it happens the first time it will regularly reboot every five minutes it seems. The fan is running on the CPU but don't have a replacement or something to test it with yet. It might be something entirely different, I just gave some insight on what I have done and some problems I am running in to. Also even since it is a P3 it can be clocked from the BIOS it seems as I can adjust bus speeds and clock speeds. I for test purposes put it on the lowest of both getting the cpu to run at 266mhz and it still happens.

Thanks, any more info? BTW Phantom I am going to try out what you recommended again just to check out your steps to see if it can rectify some issues. I 'll keep you guys updated.

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What is the temperature reading in the BIOS?
Try a new fan for your CPU. Also, if you are using Windows 98, there is downloadable software called Rain which will slow down your CPU cycles to help keep it cool. You can download it form this link:
http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stor...0,,000R2N,.html

You can also download it form this link:
http://www.pcworld.com/fileworld/fi...58,7152,00.html


Before moving to Windows 2000, I used it for over a year without any problems or conflicts. It lowered my CPU temp about 5 to 10 degrees. Try it.

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