Flashing blue and sudden reboots

[hygor]

I recently gave my brother some of my old pc2700 ddr ram (512mb) and my old Geforce 3 ti200 128mb grfx card... These both worked fine in my old system but i upgraded and didnt need them anymore and gave them to him for free.

he was experiencing a lot of slowdown on his machine while doing complex audio processing (he makes a lot of music) and I thought the ram would help him out, his old ATI grfx card couldnt really cope with call of duty so my old card was meant to help him with that...

HOWEVER

having installed them in his machine when loading XP the screen flashes blue about three times and then continues as normal. Then his system reboots randomly when in windows (he can sometimes use windows for hours with no probs, then other times he only gets a few mins in xp before it reboots. He says it is just as if he hit the reset button, its that instant and there is no BSOD or anything.

He has noticed that it likes to reboot while using Norton Antivirus to do a system scan. But this isnt the only time it reboots.

I told him to download memtest86... he did and let it cycle for a few hours and it found no errors.. so the ram looks fine.

I never had any problems with the graphics card so I dont know why this would cause problems (if indeed it is)

My thoughts turn to his psu... but why would that make the loading /login screen flash blue?

I am pretty stuck with helping him, i have suggested reseating the cards and installing new drivers... but he is still experiencing the problem!

His system spec:

ASUS A7V333 mobo
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
1gig 2700 DDR Ram
Geforce 3 Ti 200 128mb
SB Audigy
HD - I dont know
PSU - I dont know... came with his system

Any help would be great... he is starting to get stressed out!

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

I am thinking the graphics card may not have enough power?

 

[killians45]

go into system properties, advanced, startup recovery, and remove check from autoreboot in the system failure section. Post error when you get it. Also check event viewer.

 

[180Mhz]

his power supply is garbage, you need a higher power power supply to support video cards, if his system wasnt supplyed with an agp card, then his power supply is probably a cheap little 250Watt that was made just to run the system, get a new power supply.somethign at least 350Watts, and not the cheap power supplys get a good one, $70 minimum (CDN)

 

[hygor]

I told my brother to set it so that the BSOD shows up when it crashes... so he deselected the option to autoreboot...

His system now just shows a black screen upon a crash, there is no BSOD.

Anyone got any ideas as he is getting pretty annoyed with it!

 

[NewCents05]

does it crash randomly or only when u run specific programs???

 

[Alvin.C]

Re:

Hello,

...you might want to consider process of elimination...

Keep the new graphics card in, and remove the newly installed RAM. See if it boots up perfectly. If it does, then your RAM is likely to blame.

If it still goes crazy, try removing the new graphics card and re-installing the old one, and see if it works fine.

Of course, they both could be causing issues, so make sure your system works perfectly with the old RAM and graphics card in. If so, then you're probably not getting enough power, or you are experiencing graphics driver issues.

Your system should produce a DUMP file when an error occurs. Or more simply, produce an event in the event viewer Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Event Viewer...if it is installed .

 

[hygor]

I think he has a virus... it crashes when he runs Norton Antivirus... Sounding more and more like bloodhound to me.

Though my brother refuses to believe this and is still intent on blaming the hardware...

Cheers for the suggestions thou... I will tell him to look in the event viewer and also try with the new RAM out... Though he ran Memtest86 for hours with no errors!

 

[Nubius]

lol yeah, it's always the hardware

I've encountered weird crap over the years, just from installing hardware and a good format fixes it, but yeah you should look inside the case and see the total wattage of the PSU and the power of the rails.

It does sound somewhat like a PSU issue, and at the startup is right when the CPU gets a blast of usage so that will indeed tend to cause reboots if it's a PSU issue.

You could run prime95 and if it freezes or reboots as soon as he hits test then I would blame the PSU.

Try the one from your comp in his or something.

EDIT: Oh yeah as far as virus's go, download the usual Ad-aware, Spybot if you haven't already.

also www.pc-cillin.com has a decent free virus scanner if norton just causes restarts

 

[hygor]

cheers for the advice I will pass it on to him... unfortunatly i cant try my psu in his comp as he is away at uni... but maybe he can borrow a housemates psu.