Spontaneous reboot problem

[thedonnybrook]

my t42p recently came back from IBM with another new planar card from a problem with the ATI hardware (second time within a year). I reinstalled windows after initially troubleshooting the graphics hardware problem. after a week or so without having any problems, my machine started spontaneously rebooting. at first, i thought this was a heat problem. however, today, it rebooted shortly after being started, and the machine was cold to the touch. i remeber a few years ago one virus that was going around that prevented its removal by restarting the infected machine. Safemode prevents this from happening, but my AVG scans, and several spyware scans have not solved the problem. Has anyone else dealt with this problem? is it really a heat/hardware issue?

[GomJabbar]

Type "Reboot On Error" (without quotes) in Windows Help and Support - off of the Start button. Choose the third item. It explains how to prevent Windows from spontaineously rebooting. This hopefully will help you find the cause of your error.

[icantux]

Hey donnybrook,

I had the precise same problem on my home machine! It started on Monday at midnight! HA! It would reboot within 20-30 seconds from booting to desktop. Over, and over, and over... I've spent the better part of my free time re-installing everything. Thank goodness I made a monthly backup on Sunday during the Super Bowl!!!

Sadly, though, my thinkpad was also affected on Tuesday since I run a SOHO network here. So something must have transferred over at one point or another.

I never identified the bug - tried cleaning my system using various means but nothing worked.

[northyen.dk]

It's very likely it's a naughty driver causing this, so you might want to check that out.

If the reboot is caused by a driver that crashes Windows makes an entry in the event log, and, if enabled, displays a bugcheck screen.

So I'm going to recommend you to enable the bugcheck screen (blue) - Control Panel->System->Advanced->Startup and Recovery:Settings - remove checkmark next to "Automatically restart".

And then you wait, if your problem is caused by a naughty driver, it should be quite evident which driver causes this, next time Windows crashes.