Random Restarts?

L

LastElement0

New Member
hello,
im trying to help out my girlfriend with her computer problems. she has a fairly new dell running on XP. and as of late her computer has been acting up, at times getting the Blue Screen of Death and would randomly restart on her. as well as just acting sluggish. she contacted Dell and they had her do some things, she doesnt exactly remember what. one of which was disabling unecessary startup programs. any idea as to what the cause of this may be?
 
LastElement0 said:
hello,
im trying to help out my girlfriend with her computer problems. she has a fairly new dell running on XP. and as of late her computer has been acting up, at times getting the Blue Screen of Death and would randomly restart on her. as well as just acting sluggish. she contacted Dell and they had her do some things, she doesnt exactly remember what. one of which was disabling unecessary startup programs. any idea as to what the cause of this may be?
Click to expand...

Is she running Anti-virus and anti-spyware programs
 
i don't recall off the top of my head where it's located. but check in the system setup (BIOS). there is an option for automatic restart.

other then that, i'd say back up data and reinstall windows first, just in case it is a virus/spyware issue. if that still does not resolve the issue, i'd run the 32-bit diags on the whole system

if you don't know how to do that, send me a message or something and i'll give you instructions. if you gfet an error, call dell and give it to them

make sure when running the diags that you have media in all your drives. floppy, cd, etc
 
Could be, virus, P/S, Ram, heat if a fan stop working, dont think the video card would do that,usually the video card will make it lock up instead of restart, I would run a virus and spyware scan first to rule that out
 
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

thats the message she got. and before our chat with dell got disconnected, it seemed as if they were acting like memory was the issue cuz we ended up going to virtual memory and stuff. so i started thinking maybe insufficient RAM was the problem. is 256 mb enough for XP home?
 
has any hardware been installed recently because the blue screen can often signify a hardware problem
 
dell dimension dim2400
intel (R) pentium (R) 4CPU 2.4 GHz
2.39 GHz 256 MB of RAM

came straight from her system properties
i assume its a RAM issue, so what kind would i need to get?
 
I think so to, there may be a way around it, but if your getting RAM you need to get PC2700 DDR (not DDR2) RAM. You can get PC3200 it just wont run at that speed. I recomend something like corsair value.

Dell wont replace the RAM for you?
 
LastElement0 said:
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

thats the message she got. and before our chat with dell got disconnected, it seemed as if they were acting like memory was the issue cuz we ended up going to virtual memory and stuff. so i started thinking maybe insufficient RAM was the problem. is 256 mb enough for XP home?
Click to expand...

I agree 90% of the time that code has something to do with ram, havent accidently changed a bios setting? I would try swaping out some ram first just to make sure thats the problem, if not try unhooking hardware untill it stops giving the error, can be a pain!!
 
alright thanks for all of your help guys. thats what i assumed was the issue,so know im gonna ask the computer tech at my school who im good with and see if i can get some extra ram suitable for her computer.
 
first of all its a dell, 2nd its windows xp home, and 3rd, probably a ram issue, take one stick out and see if the problem exists, if it does, take it back and build your own..

~C
 
itman said:
first of all its a dell, 2nd its windows xp home, and 3rd, probably a ram issue, take one stick out and see if the problem exists, if it does, take it back and build your own..

~C
Click to expand...
Dude, thats the most ignorent thing I've heard all day, Dell's arent bad, neither is windows XP home. And if the problem persists, that doesn't mean you need a new system, if you cant even troubleshoot a problem you're not ready to build a comp.
 
dude, thats the most ignorent thing i've heard all day, Dell's arent bad, neither is Windows XP home. and if the problem persists, that doesn't mean you need a new system, if you cant even troubleshoot a problem you're not ready to build a comp.
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ownd! :d

@lastelement0: try looking at temperatures and/or voltages. programs like SpeedFan or Motherboard Monitor 5 may help
.
 
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