Unexplained sudden Vista x64 crash. Please help!

Thanks in advance for any help that can be offered!

My Homebuilt dual core PC has started crashing at apparently random intervals.
The behaviour is this; sudden black screen, PC hard drives and fans still running, a 3-4 second interval, PC powers down, auto restart of PC, boots to 'SAFE mode' options boot screen, then reboots entirely normally when 'start my computer normally' is selected.

I have scoured the error log and have found several unusual entries. I am at a major loss as to their relevance i would really appreciate any help regarding this problem.

Incidentally this beviour occured 3 or so months ago and eventually resulted in a BSOD with STOP error which was resolved by new hard drive and clean install of VISTA! Im not keen for that to be repeated!

Thanks once again!

Fill out your system specs in the UserCP. It's difficult to diagnose without having any idea who the patient is.

Ooops good point Fumz!

Have updated specs. Any other info your require?

What are the unusual entries in your error logs? How old is the PSU? Did all this start on or about the time you got the 3850? How often does this occur? Are you using any custom bios settings? Can you recreate the error after having loaded the optimized defaults and fail safe defaults? Have you double checked all your cabling?

PSU and case just 4 months old, Cabling checked and all fine, ive had the 3850 since i built the computer, so can say its due to that...I was overclocking the CPU but i have now loaded default BIOS settings, but that has made no difference to the behaviour. It occurs 2 or 3 times a day, but interestingly it seems to occur more nearer to the time after i have turned the computer on. Usually 5 - 20 minutes in. It then may occur 2 or 3 times again but seems to settle. I rarely use computer for much longer than a few hours a day.

Thanks once again

I have run the forums system info tool, would you be interested in the output?

Yes, please. I had forgotten to ask you to do that. Btw, how hot is it where you live?

Hi Fumz,
Britain is always cold! Dont think its a problem with overheating as when monitoring temps they always seems very low.
Disaster struck yesterday, read on a forum that P5KC MOBO have had some problems with memory handling and that a bios upgrade might be required, tried to flash BIOS from windows (doh!).
Wiped bios clean but the crappy ASUS own program never updated it, the result is a dead MOBO. Tried everything to reset BIOS to no avail. The upshot is that the MOBO is currently on its way back to seller for replacement or reset.
Im hoping they will put the new BIOS on it and im hoping this mightsolve my problems.
Once its back in i will let you know if it crashes again and send you the system log.

Cheers!

drprod said:

Disaster struck yesterday, read on a forum that P5KC MOBO have had some problems with memory handling and that a bios upgrade might be required, tried to flash BIOS from windows (doh!).
Wiped bios clean but the crappy ASUS own program never updated it, the result is a dead MOBO. Tried everything to reset BIOS to no avail. The upshot is that the MOBO is currently on its way back to seller for replacement or reset.
Im hoping they will put the new BIOS on it and im hoping this mightsolve my problems.
Once its back in i will let you know if it crashes again and send you the system log.

Cheers!

Click to expand...

I know how that feels. I have a Asus P5K MOBO and done the same thing, found out the hard way that the problem is only on Vista x64, they did replace the board no problems, as they should, not like I did anything that shouldn't have. But I learnt a lesson and will only do a bios update from the bios now! Also they made this verry easy with the use of a memmory stick containing the bios update.

Drprod, I did the very same thing last weekend.

Asus should really take off the Window Bios update from their site as it doesn't work and it will kill your motherboard's bios........AAaaargh.

A good opportunity to get a new motherboard though....in my case.

A reinstall may be required and may be quicker than trying to find that needle in a haystack that causes the BSOD.

Good luck with it.

Hi drprod....

you might try disabling ''Transaction Booster''....

this might not be related but also bear in mind you could have fallen foul to the dreaded P5K gremlins!!! these boards have known BIOS & boot issues

my board suffers from a few anomaly's ...i.e.

it wont restart !!EVER!! ...i have to shut down the machine & power back up if i wanna restart or it will just hang..
which is a right pig when updating.

sometimes while in the BIOS it will freeze & the power has to be shut off & then i must restart twice!! to get into windows.

these problems are completely random ..... most days its fine but it does happen quite a lot
its not the BIOS itself ...i have flashed it twice & the problems remain

this is a quote i found after googling P5K issues

''I have seen many people complain about P5K that it is faulty because it will not let someone boot because it says overclocking is failed, and it does this even if u change the time and date in bios this is not a faulty mother board but a faulty bios. for some reason they have not paid attention to P5K Premium/BlackPerl/Vanilla customers. there r also problems big big problems with non Seagate SATA2 hard drives they don't work most of the time, ASUS blame this on HDD manufactures.... but the motherboard should be built to fit other components not the components built to fit the motherboard. i know how people feel because ASUS was my first build and it took me 3 months to get my build finished. never again will i buy ASUS''


also have a look here