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Windows XP Random Restarts, help plz

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Mutanatia
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12 Jan 2009, 10:17 pm

My computer, going back about 2 days, has been randomly restarting/crashing. Earlier in the day, I got a blue screen of death and a message about a hardware failure/NMI Memory Error. And then the screen glitched on me when I was playing an itunes video podcast and restarted. Additionally, this happened to me yesterday as well, when I was playing a video podcast. Itunes was open when I got the blue screen of death as well.

I have no idea what is causing this...does anybody?



silentbob15
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12 Jan 2009, 10:51 pm

Are you getting lots on pop up messages when on the internet? if yes, possible adware or virus ( install spybot and run on;ine antivirus)
Added any new hardware, or plugged a usb device in? if yes, to usb, possible damaged hardware (a damaged usb will give this error)


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Mutanatia
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12 Jan 2009, 11:07 pm

No...and...no O.o
no popups

no usb device



Dokken
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13 Jan 2009, 12:12 am

You may have 2 programs that don't play well together when ran at the same time


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iceb
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13 Jan 2009, 12:36 am

Sounds to me like a hardware fault as the error message says memory locking up.


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pakled
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13 Jan 2009, 12:49 am

NMI stands for Non-Maskable Interrupt. Could be memory, or just bad usage of memory. Could be a lot of things, but try software solutions first, then possibly to replacing memory (go with the Software solutions. More info to follow by other persons)



silentbob15
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13 Jan 2009, 1:15 am

try going to run / msconfig and check your start up programs, I only leave my antivirus and cftmon running, look for anything new and do a online search of each program in the list.
Heres a site with a list of program in your start up list
http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php



OccamsIndecision
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13 Jan 2009, 3:15 am

The last time I had problems like what you are describing it turned out that my power supply was failing. (power supply, not the surge protector)



Keith
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13 Jan 2009, 3:25 am

Usually BSOD or screen freezes are attributes of a failing power supply. Restarts without anything are usually CPU overheating. I'd check the voltages in the BIOS of possible, never 100% accurate but something to start with



greengeek
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13 Jan 2009, 6:28 pm

Those screens could mean that the hardware is failing. It happened to me and it turned out to too much voltage from the power supply and too much heat from the CPU chip. It took out the motherboard Hard Drive and CD-ROM controllers and two hard drives I needed to get my hard drive recovered. I would back up you data to an external drive if I were you.


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silentbob15
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13 Jan 2009, 7:58 pm

I had the same issue, it turned out to be a damaged usb port on the front of the computer case



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16 Jan 2009, 10:24 pm

Mutanatia wrote:
My computer, going back about 2 days, has been randomly restarting/crashing. Earlier in the day, I got a blue screen of death and a message about a hardware failure/NMI Memory Error. And then the screen glitched on me when I was playing an itunes video podcast and restarted. Additionally, this happened to me yesterday as well, when I was playing a video podcast. Itunes was open when I got the blue screen of death as well.

I have no idea what is causing this...does anybody?


Well, if you got a message about hardware failure then perhaps your hardware is on it's way out eh? Or maybe, like someone else said, it has something to do with the power supply to your computer. Hmm.