Does my computer just miss me or what?

[frau kaleun]

I am having a somewhat bizarre (to me) problem the past two days.

When I am at the computer actually doing stuff, everything seems fine. It boots up normally, any program I open runs fine, multiple progams open at the same time cause no problems, and I can't find any obvious evidence that there's anything wrong.

If I walk away from the computer and leave it idle for a while it shuts down and reboots while I'm away from it. I come back to the Windows login screen, log in, everything loads, and I get a message saying Windows has recovered from a serious error. Everything then works fine until I walk away again to do something else and come back to see it's shut down and rebooted all over again.

This happened 4-5 times last night. I fired it up, checked my email, surfed the web, went to get my laundry out of the dryer - shut down, reboot. Played some solitaire, checked in here, opened several things just to see if anything seemed "off" about performance, looked through the running processes in Task Manager to see if I saw anything I didn't recognize (I didn't), checked some other things, no clues. Went to make dinner, a few minutes later I hear a distinctive "beep" and come back and it's rebooting again. No problems doing anything after reboot completes, go to take a shower - shut down, reboot.

By the time I got done doing all the stuff I needed to walk away from it to do, it was too late to really get into troubleshooting. Came home tonight, turned it on, took care of my email, played SH3 for a couple of hours, checked in here, closed all but the background programs that are always running, went to eat dinner, come back, and it's shut down and rebooted itself again.

I sent the error report to Microsoft to see what info I'd get - last night did the same but got a web page saying it couldn't provide any. Tonight I got one saying there was problem with a driver that caused a blue screen error but it couldn't identify which one and that I should check for any available updates. I'm doing that right now, but nothing changed on this machine since before this problem started unless it happened without my knowledge - no new installations, no configuration changes, nothing that I can think of. I wasn't having this problem Sunday evening, it worked fine all day whether I was on it or it sat idle for hours, until I shut it down.

So I guess I'll install whatever updates I can find and see what happens, in the meantime if anybody's got any suggestions whatsoever about where to look... it just seems weird that the shutdown/reboot only happens after I walk away and it sits idle for a while. Which makes me think there's a problem with something that only runs when the computer is idle, which would mostly be auto backups and various scans and the normal utility type stuff that Norton 360 does all the time. I renewed my subscription with them a few days ago but that shouldn't have changed any settings or drivers. And I didn't change anything on it manually. I also looked through the various logs in Norton 360 to see if anything odd popped up but there was nothing that jumped out at me.

(Yeah I know a lotta geeky types don't like Norton - but I've used it forever and never had a problem with it, so telling me to ditch it and get some other programs that does what it does will not be considered helpful, lol.)

[Arclight]

Might be power-saving. :hmmm:

My PC did something similarly weird: Shut down completely, even fans, and then starts beeping CPU overheat warning. Either I just didn't set it up properly (I never tried, so could be) or it just doesn't work. At any rate, I disabled the computer from going into standby/sleep.

Could start by preventing the HDs from shutting down, see if that fixes it.

[CaptainHaplo]

The message of a driver problem is likely the culprit. Only problem is - to find out what driver it is - you will need to see it when it blue screens. It will list a filename and path. If you can provide that, then it should be easy to track down what device/driver is causing the issue.

[frau kaleun]

That was the first thing I checked - to see if somehow the Power options had been changed. Everything is set to Always On, nothing should be shutting down or going to sleep or on standby without me telling it to.

Plus there's the fact that I'm getting the "recovered from a serious error" message when it reboots.

I've updated the audio and video drivers - and installed the one WinXP update that was available. There were also two other driver updates at MS Update, one for my scanner, which I successfully downloaded and installed. The other was for something called Amyuni Document Converter 300 and there was a message saying I should install it because it appeared that the device that used it wasn't operating properly.

It successfully downloaded but several repeat attempts to have MS Update install it resulted in a failure message with no other useful information provided - none of the links MS provides go to anything that deals with this update specifically.

Googling around I saw some stuff indicating that this driver is something needed for a printer, and/or also something that Intuit programs use (I use Quicken) but going to the Amyuni website hasn't yielded anything so far (didn't have time to plow through all their forums yet).

Also, according to Device Manager, all my hardware is working properly. So I don't know what MS Update is referring to.

I did find a "Quicken PDF Printer" in my Printers folder and it does appear to be using the Amyuni software; I went through the properties for it and when I found the place where drivers could be installed, the driver it wanted was in my Quicken folder but Windows returned an error when I tried to install it.

I deleted the "printer" and I'll see what happens when I open Quicken. I don't print things from the Quicken program so maybe it was something I didn't need that was just fouling up the works - but I haven't made any changes in Quicken and the program hasn't updated itself recently, so who knows.

I went to take a shower while I ran a virus scan and came back 20 minutes later to find it had shut down and rebooted again. However the virus scan reports that it was completed and didn't find anything. I've also tried to run the registry scan/cleanup but every time I do I end up walking away and when I come back, you guessed it, another reboot. And that scan doesn't finish so I wonder if it's trying to run in the background anyway while the system is idle and that's where the problem is.

OTOH, now that I think about it, I didn't have that scan set to run automatically until after all this started - so that's probably not it either.

I don't know what else to do but sit here in front of the thing and not touch it and see what happens that might be causing the shutdown.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike, lol. Yeah, I may just have to sit here until I get the blue screen and see what it says. Anyway - I'm gonna do a deliberate restart and see if the Quicken printer is back again or not.

[frau kaleun]

Well, that's interesting. I rebooted and checked to make sure the Quicken PDF Printer had not somehow been reinstalled in the Printers folder. It's still gone. I open Quicken and check Printer Setup, the only option is my HP printer. Close Quicken, check Printers folder, only thing there is still my HP printer.

Go back to MS Update and now it successfully installs the Amyuni Document Converter software update that failed the install before.

The Quicken PDF Printer is still not listed in my Printers folder, so the update didn't reinstall it there - but maybe something to do with that conflicted with the update from MS.

Very confusing. At any rate I can't sit up waiting for this thing to go to blue screen again, if it's gonna do that - so I'll just run away and live to fret another day.

It's just seems odd that I can be on here for any length of time and it doesn't crash - but leave it idle for a few minutes and it does.

Gah I hate updating video drivers, now I have to painstakingly rearrange all my desktop icons again. :O:

[Reece]

Most strange, my first thought was power savings as Arclight suggested, I have power savings disabled in bios and windows yet I know my HDD goes to sleep without constant use, could be a faulty HDD!:hmmm: What happens if you run a large screen saver? leave it run for hour or so and see if it freezes or if system reboots when moving the mouse.:-?

[Tweety]

Hello frau kaleun,

if you computer is automatically restarting you could disable this feature by right clicking on my computer
left clicking on properties
click on advance near the top
click on start up and recovery settings
uncheck the automatically restart box under system failure

This would show the BSOD (blue screen of death).
The second or third line from the top will say something about the problem
in example: in your case if it is a driver it would say what the driver belongs to being video card or sound or some other driver.

you could take a picture with a digital camera and post the picture here. I doubt if taking a screen shot (press alt and hold down prt screen) would work. It might give it a try.

This should help in finding out what driver is causing the problem.
Hope this helps.

Tweety

[frau kaleun]

I'll see what it does tonight - I'll only be home for a bit after work and then out for a couple of hours. If it's gonna crash again while idle, I'll certainly know when I get home again. I'll uncheck the auto restart in that case and then see what info I can get from the BSoD the next time it happens.

I have it set to "always on" in Windows but I may go into Setup on startup to see if there's something there that needs to be disabled.

I hate screensavers and don't use them, so it's not like one is kicking in during idle time and crashing the system.

If it's one of the Norton auto-functions that is crashing it, or causing something else to crash the system, it should be easy enough to pin down. If it sits idle and Norton 360 starts doing something I can set it to popup a little window that tells me what it's doing and when.

There's also the Last Known Good Config option, which I haven't tried. If it's one driver that needs updating or rolling back I'd rather find that and fix it.

Does anybody ever have any luck with System Restore? Honestly I never manually create System Restore points, but the few times I've tried to use it over the years, it always shows me a bunch of restore points that it says were automatically created but if I try to restore to one of 'em it tells me on reboot that it can't do it. So I always used to wonder if it was because the problem I was having made restoration impossible anyway, or if the auto-created points were generally useless for some reason.

[Arclight]

Restore points are handy if you make one manually, make the changes that might cause trouble, and then restore to just before the changes if there's trouble.

Since I don't make manual points, it's never been of use to me.

Think "last known good config" only helps on failed boot; every time the system starts succesfully, that becomes the "last known good config". Don't think it will do you much good in this case.



Something I thought about is some CPU powersaving option in the BIOS. Maybe the down-volting makes it unstable, leading to a crash eventually. Bit of a longshot though. :hmmm:

[longam]

See if its registering any errors in the event logs.

[SteamWake]

Umm try a different screensaver?

[Spike88]

Maybe when you're walking away from it, you some how interfere with the electricity going to it. You should just sit in front of it and read a book and see if it does it still.

[frau kaleun]

Umm try a different screensaver?

I don't use one, never have.

[frau kaleun]

See if its registering any errors in the event logs.

Where would I find those? I've tried looking at the files that Windows sends in the error report, but that's just gobbledy-gook to me. Nothing jumps out as a potential problem in all the places I know to look for specific info.

I think right now the option of just staying right there but letting it go idle to see if I can catch it crashing is looking pretty good. Provided the changes I made last night didn't solve the driver issue that seems to be causing the problem.

If it does crash again I'll try to get a look at the BSoD to see if that pinpoints anything.

[frau kaleun]

Maybe when you're walking away from it, you some how interfere with the electricity going to it. You should just sit in front of it and read a book and see if it does it still.

Yes, that's got to be it. It's my electrifying presence. My computer haz a sad when deprived of it!

[longam]

Where would I find those?

Right click on My Computer and select manage.

[Reece]

I hate screensavers and don't use them, so it's not like one is kicking in during idle time and crashing the system.What I meant was if you use a large screen saver this will keep the computer busy during the "idle" time and it may not crash, was just for an experiment!:yep:

[frau kaleun]

Right click on My Computer and select manage.

I foundz 'em when I went in to disable the automatic restart. :)

What I meant was if you use a large screen saver this will keep the computer busy during the "idle" time and it may not crash, was just for an experiment!

Ah. Gotcha.

Well, anyway, I was able to pinpoint exactly what was causing the crash - I turned it on when I got home and sat here and filed my nails waiting to see what would happen. As soon as the Norton automatic backup started - boom. Nothing came up on the blue screen that gave me a specific file or error info to look into though. I rebooted and ran the backup manually - boom. Same thing. Disabled the auto backup feature and left for 2 1/2 hours, letting every other idle background task go on as usual - no problems. Still up and running when I came home.

I still don't know if it's a Norton problem per se - which seems doubtful, since I've used that feature on two computers running the same O/S and basically the same programs and configs and whatnot without any problem up til now. I rather suspect that a file got corrupted or deleted somewhere, or else something changed that made the Norton backup conflict with something else. I do use the Windows backup program to back up my entire C drive to one external drive, but that's scheduled to run only once a month I think and shouldn't have been interfering with the Norton backup over the past couple of days.

I reinstalled the Norton product to see if it will still cause the same error after a clean install - if so I'll just disable the backup feature (which I don't really need anyway, it was one of those things I was just letting go on because it was there and configured and saved a smaller set of files to an alternate external drive. Mostly just a "backup" backup of crucial data files. If I try it and still get a system failure I'll disable it again and pursue the issue with Norton just to make sure it's not caused by something that might give me other problems.

Thanks for all the help and advice, as always!

[Tweety]

Your welcome frau kaleun.

I'm glad your narrowed down the problem.

Tweety

[Reece]

Good to hear you found the problem, btw, I use and love Norton Ghost!!:up:

[frau kaleun]

Yeah, I've been using Norton programs since I got my first PC. They've certainly saved my butt on a number of occasions when other things went wrong. Never had a problem using any of them.

Other than the backup crashing my system, lol, which never happened before after over a year of continuous use - we're talking a background program that probably ran at least once a day. I'm gonna configure a minimal backup in there and run it just to see if it still crashes or if the reinstall worked, curious to see what happens.

[frau kaleun]

Before configuring the backup I decided to run chkdsk/f on the external drives I back stuff up to. Found and repaired errors on one of them, which may very well have been part (or all) of the problem. Not sure how that happened all sudden like, but whatever. And the backup will now run without crashing my system should I choose to use it. :)