Computer reboots 2

[Citt1]

I have a friend who has a computer that keeps on rebooting out of the clear blue. It is not any of the obvious viruses that give a countdown, like sasser. I thought it was a virus or spyware, but when I took his hard drive out and slaved it in mine it cleaned it, but it found a little spyware and no virus. So, from there I thought maybe this was caused by registry problems. I purchased for him the new registry cleaner from the makers of zone alarm. I used it after putting the hard drive back in his pc. Again it cleaned it, but it still reboot for no reason after a while. I was ready to give up when I realized I was approaching this completely from a software perspective and not hardware. Then I remembered that when a cpu is overclocked it can cause the computer to reboot randomly. But, if I wanted to check this I would have a problem. His computer is an e-machine. I have no idea how to get into BIOS and if I can. The splash screen does not offer any function keys.

So, here are my questions.

Does anyone know how to get into BIOS on a e-machine?

Also, is there any software that is cheap or free that would check the hardware to give a diagnostics on it, to let me know if everything is functioning properly or if a CPU is overclocked? ( He has an AMD CPU )

Do you agree with my approach for CPU or hardware?

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[gpalmer711]

On a eMachine when you first switch the PC on repeatedly alternate between the Esc and F1 keys, i'm sure you only need one of the keys but this combination got me into an eMachines BIOS a couple of weeks ago.

Next thing I would do is disable automatic restarts in Windows XP.

Click Start > right click My Computer > Select Properties > Click on the Advanced Tab > Click on the Settings button under the heading "Startup and Recovery" > Untick "Automatically Restart" > Click ok > Click ok

Now next time there is a problem the PC should display a blue screen and not restart.

Yes I think that it could well be a hardware issue. Check the RAM using something like memtest86 available from

http://www.memtest.org/

or the Microsoft Memory Tester available from

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

(both free)

As for the other components then the best I think you can do without swapping them out is to stress test them using something like Sisoft SANDRA from

http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/index.html?dir=dload&location=sware_dl_3264&langx=en&a=

more details at

http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/index.html?dir=&location=qa&langx=en&a=

this will allow you to push the components and see if the machine crashes to the Blue screen

Hope this helps


Greg Palmer
Freeware Utilities for Windows Administrators.

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[Citt1]

You are awesome!!! The testing software worked great and the memory was bad. Thanks!!!!

 

[gpalmer711]

No problem, glad you got it sorted.

Greg Palmer
Freeware Utilities for Windows Administrators.

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk