Anyone up for a challenge?

Is anybody up for a challenge? This is doing my head in!

I recently purchased an ex-IRD laptop (Toshiba Tecra S2). Up until 3 days ago it was working fine. Now it just randomly decides to reboot shortly after getting into the OS (XP Home).

I've searched everywhere for somebody who has had similar problems. What happens is the screen will just randomly turn off but if i have music running it will still be playing and then after 5-10 seconds it reboots. Sometimes as it's rebooting it will make those obnoxiously loud system beeps.

I've had SpeedFan (Almico.com) but it will only show my HDD temperature (24C Avg). The CPU temperature is blank.

Last night i reformatted and managed to download and install the millions of drivers without it rebooting at all... then this morning i jumped on and started mucking around with desktop wallpaper and it did it again!

I have all the latest drivers from Toshiba's website, and reformatting rules out virus or settings problems.

Any help is greatly appreciated, i am seriously gutted about my recent purchase

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Comments

networker050184

If its a recent purchase I'd return it.

ULWiz

Yeah could be either software or hardware i would think. What changed since last time when it was working. Did you add anything new to the pc etc.

If this was a recent purchase or has a warranty i would send it in.

tiersten

Open the System section in control panel. Select Advanced. Click Settings in the Startup and Recovery portion. Uncheck the box next to Automatically Restart.

XP defaults to auto rebooting after any fatal error and you can't see what happened. It should generate a minidump as well but just disabling the auto reboot is usually enough to read the messages.

The music still playing thing may just be because the sound card is still emptying its buffer. The rest of the OS by this point is dead but the sound card doesn't know so it'll just keep doing what it got last told to do.

TechJunky

Sounds like an Nvida video card problem.... I have seen this a lot on desktop systems...

What kind of vid card ya running?

RussS

Thats what ya get for buying something erx IRD bro

I think tiersten has offered the best disgnostic advice you will probably find that TechJunky hit it on the head .... wrong graphics driver. I have seen that with both Tosh and HP laptops when a particular model uses different motherboards and/or chipsets.

deadpool287

TechJunky wrote:

Sounds like an Nvida video card problem.... I have seen this a lot on desktop systems...

What kind of vid card ya running?

im going to second this one. I have had problems like this with video cards. and the beeps your hearing are also a clue to what could be wrong fyi.

Deminetix

Is it possible that even if it IS my Nvidia card that it could still reboot even in CMOS or anywhere out of the OS?

dynamik

Possibly. It'd be a physical hardware problem and not a driver issue though. Is there a reason you can't simply exchange this?

Deminetix

I do not think i can get a refund or replacement. It worked fine when i got it.

Deminetix

Oh and TechJunkie it's an Nvidia GeForce Go 6600.

Thanks for all your help so far guys.

Technowiz

I would boot it off of a Ubuntu or some other live cd and run it for a while on that. Might help narrow down if it is a hardware problem or not.

hypnotoad

Technowiz wrote:

I would boot it off of a Ubuntu or some other live cd and run it for a while on that. Might help narrow down if it is a hardware problem or not.

+1...also try a memtest and hard drive diagnostic -- if the data somewhere is corrupt, it will cause any problem imaginable. possibly turn off hardware acceleration on the video card, since you mentioned weirdness in the video.