Computer trouble

[Inkthinker]

Anyone know if there's a new virus or something running about that might cause a computer to periodically reset without warning? I seem to recall that's happened before...

Damn thing is so unstable, I can't even take the time to run Norton. Even in safe mode it resets without warning. I've checked all the hardware (the connections, anyhow) so I'm blaming this on a software glitch... I have the most recent Win2K service pack, but I don't know what else to think.

[dfbovey]

There was some kinda worm going around that was screwing up alot of people last week. There was a patch released for it. Sorry for being vague but that's all I really remember.

[xadrian]

Reset without warning sounds more like a power supply than anything a virus could do to an OS.

The most recent are the Bagle worms that either open up a port of the victim's machine using SMTP or increase all exe file sizes by 45k, along with the typical registry entry. Nothing in the MacAfee database about restarting the OS or the machine as an indication of infection.

[brendon]

if you have winXP you can always pop the OS disk in and it will reinstall windows without removing your programs and files...in other word "repair" windows. But you have to make sure you click the right buttons. I'm not sure if it works with every release...

[Dash Martin]

This is a farely common issue. A lot of the time, it's a driver problem. Make sure you have the newest drivers for your motherboard's chipset as well as the newest drivers for your videocard, soundcard, and network card. Also, snag all the updates you can from Windows Update. There may already be a fix for it. Checking for a BIOS update for your motherboard could help, too.

[Inkthinker]

I've been reading up on Beagle and Netsky (both are nasty, nasty little bitches), but actually it sounds like Dash may have nailed it... I did recently install a new SCSI card for the scanner and it was giving me a bit of trouble, but I thought I'd gotten past it. I'll have to reload the drivers and see what I can see.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys, I really appreciate it.

[Agentdemon]

I'm pretty sure I got the virus everyone is talking about. It happended like 3 or 4 weeks ago and for some reason my computer would just keep reseting and never stop unless I turned it off. So I had to reinstal windows XP. It sucked!

[Inkthinker]

I believe it was a driver issue. If I didn't turn on the scanner when turning on the computer, it stopped pulling those auto-restart, leading me to believe that it was something to do with the scanner and TWAIN drivers. I went to Epson's site, downloaded their uninstaller, removed the old drivers and when prompted for the new ones on startup, used the drivers I got from Epson's site rather than the one's from the disk.

So far, so good... we'll see if it takes.

[Inkthinker]

Okay, now it's gotten weirder... it's pulled the restart gag once with the scanner not on when the computer was started (so the device shouldn't even be interfering, because it's not recognized).

But more importantly, I now have IE doing the same thing. Both as an Internet browser and a desktop browser, occasionally it just tells me, "oops! Sorry, 'encountered a problem' and now it's going to restart. Bye-bye to whatever you were doing!"

Pissin' me off...

[brendon]

These types of problems have never seemed to difficult for me, logically speaking, because I always know right away that it'll take me longer to figure out exactly what the F'in problem is then it will for me to simply reinstall the OS. So that's what I do!!! If your issue is so bad that you can't back up your files, then the only problem you have is figuring out how to get into Safe Mode or Dos Mode to copy files. ..and it's usually not that hard.

Then once you have a back up, reinstall. Including the reinstall of your favorite programs, it shouldn't take more than an hour.

I back up my files every half year or so, just for this reason. Even my new and fancy Sony Vaio ran into problems. I've yet to see a computer that doesn't need an occasional OS reinstall. I consider it standard proceedure.