Author Topic: Random Reboot issues (was Anyone else having random reboots with Firefox) (Read 58,456 times)

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #25 on:** December 15, 2007, 04:28 PM »

Maybe something got corrupted during the update process - I had no probs with the previous version and since reinstalling I haven't had any issue with reboots - even when I deliberately put my system under stress.

Ralf Maximus · « **Reply #26 on:** December 16, 2007, 02:39 AM »

Glad to hear you're stable again, Carol.

I'm still pretty impressed you found a way to BSOD with a high-level application. If it was a video-capture suite or DVD burner or something I could maybe see that happening... but FireFox?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #27 on:** December 16, 2007, 10:03 AM »

Quote from: Ralf Maximus on December 16, 2007, 02:39 AM

Glad to hear you're stable again, Carol.

I wouldn't go that far - but my computer is OK

J-Mac · « **Reply #28 on:** December 16, 2007, 05:28 PM »

Here's an error I've noticed in the Event Viewer for the last few days:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 12/12/2007
Time: 12:51:14 AM
User: N/A
Computer: JMCGO92504
Description:
Faulting application firefox.exe, version 1.8.20071.2514, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x02a2c51b.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 66 69 72 ure fir
0018: 65 66 6f 78 2e 65 78 65 efox.exe
0020: 20 31 2e 38 2e 32 30 30 1.8.200
0028: 37 31 2e 32 35 31 34 20 71.2514
0030: 69 6e 20 75 6e 6b 6e 6f in unkno
0038: 77 6e 20 30 2e 30 2e 30 wn 0.0.0
0040: 2e 30 20 61 74 20 6f 66 .0 at of
0048: 66 73 65 74 20 30 32 61 fset 02a
0050: 32 63 35 31 62 0d 0a 2c51b..

All after installing the 2.0.0.11 update. Yet, no crashes here?!?

Jim

J-Mac · « **Reply #29 on:** December 16, 2007, 05:35 PM »

Carol - since this occurs only when you click on the Firefox desktop icon, can you look at the icon and tell us what is there? Target? Location? Start in (folder)?

Maybe there's a clue there. Perhaps instead of calling Firefox from Program Files something got corrupted and it is calling for something that causes a shutdown?

Just a thought...

Jim

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #30 on:** December 16, 2007, 06:23 PM »

Not come across that error in my eventlog.

My shortcut points to "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" with other settings to the obvious values - but then I am no longer suffering the issues I originally posted about.

J-Mac · « **Reply #31 on:** December 16, 2007, 06:48 PM »

OK. I just thought it sounded really weird for the PC to hard reboot after clicking on a shortcut, and that it might be something in the shortcut itself that was somehow corrupted. That error is what I found for the last several days, in my Event Viewer - and I haven't been having any noticeable issues with Firefox recently.

Glad it's all sorted out!

Jim

john_doe123 · « **Reply #32 on:** December 19, 2007, 12:01 PM »

Quote from: f0dder on December 15, 2007, 03:18 PM

Hmmm, that sounds very very weird, a usermode program shouldn't be able to cause hard reboots like that. It must be a flaw somewhere in a device driver, although that sounds very weird as well... Which graphic card + driver version do you use, Carol and john_doe123? Firefox does allocate a fair amount of resources, so perhaps you have a graphics driver with a GDI resource bug or something? That'd be my best guess.

I did what Carol said, backed up my profile, did a complete uninstall of FF with the "Your Uninstaller! 2008" program, and a reinstall of FF 2.0.0.11. Since then I haven't experienced the reboot problem again. I'm not sure if I should be happy that my Firefox is "healthy" again, or sad that I didn't manage to pinpoint the actual cause of the problem. But I think I'm going to go with happy for now.

I agree that a regular application shouldn't be able to make the OS crash, but the error message I got from Microsoft's troubleshooting page after rebooting mentioned a device driver problem (but unfortunately did not give any hint as to which one). As for graphics cards I have two, a Radeon 9800 Pro (ATI driver 6.14.10.6553) and an ancient "Matrox Graphics Millennium II PCI" card (Microsoft driver 5.1.2001.0), but which is currently disabled. The old Matrox card might be a possible troublemaker, but I've been running this setup without any hardware changes since early 2004, and experienced no previous problems.

J-Mac · « **Reply #33 on:** December 19, 2007, 07:36 PM »

Quote from: john_doe123 on December 19, 2007, 12:01 PM

.... but I've been running this setup without any hardware changes since early 2004, and experienced no previous problems.

Unfortunately I have found that Microsoft Updates/patches often can make changes in your system that cause drivers that have been working fine to suddenly have major conflicts with the system changes. I've been burned by this on more than one occasion!!

Jim

john_doe123 · « **Reply #34 on:** December 20, 2007, 10:57 PM »

Ok, now it happened again.

I had the "automatic reboot on system error" setting disabled, so this time I got the Blue Screen Of Death when opening Firefox. The error message read "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA", which according to Google is usually related to memory/disk problems. So I'm starting to think that there might be some issues with my hardware...

Wordzilla · « **Reply #35 on:** December 20, 2007, 11:00 PM »

My firefox 2.0.0.11 was a huge CPU hog, what did I do?

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0b2/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%203.0%20Beta%202.exe

Get firefox 3 beta 2

Lashiec · « **Reply #36 on:** December 21, 2007, 12:42 AM »

Be sure to read the "Known Issues" section if you do, though, some potential important sites, like Yahoo! Mail or Windows Live Mail are broken. They're also broken in Opera 9.5 Beta... I think I see a trend... I glimpse workarounds in the browsers' rendering code for those sites

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #37 on:** March 12, 2008, 11:24 PM »

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but ...

My system has started to randomly reboot (ie. screen goes black without warning and the system boots up from the BIOS again). There are no associated errors in the event logs.

There is a recurring error set of errors that seems to be happening pretty frequently though:

At restart/shutdown I sometimes (but not always) get a string of errors with various applications hanging: explorer, memory addressing errors, .Net Broadcast 2 Error and others. It seems totally random if errors occur and what errors occur.
I am getting a frequent error in my system event log

Code

Event Type:	Warning
Event Source:	Disk
Event Category:	None
Event ID:	51
Date:		12/03/2008
Time:		21:13:40
User:		N/A
Computer:	LAIRDSWOOD
Description:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk3\D during a paging operation.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 04 00 68 00 01 00 b6 00   ..h...¶.
0008: 00 00 00 00 33 00 04 80   ....3..€
0010: 2d 01 00 00 00 00 00 00   -.......
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ........
0020: 00 7e 00 bc 00 00 00 00   .~.¼....
0028: 12 65 13 00 00 00 00 00   .e......
0030: ff ff ff ff 03 00 00 00   ÿÿÿÿ....
0038: 40 00 00 84 02 00 00 00   @..„....
0040: 00 20 0a 12 80 01 20 40   . ..€. @
0048: 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00   ........
0050: 00 40 42 88 a8 8f a6 88   .@Bˆ¨¦ˆ
0058: 00 00 00 00 e8 ca 5e 8a   ....èÊ^Š
0060: 00 00 00 00 3f 00 5e 00   ....?.^.
0068: 2a 00 00 5e 00 3f 00 00   *..^.?..
0070: 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ........
0078: 70 00 02 00 00 00 00 0a   p.......
0080: 00 00 00 00 04 02 00 00   ........
0088: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00   ........

which seems to be a memory problem with paging stuff in and out of memory to the pagefile. I have checked all of my partitions thoroughly with chkdsk including file data consistency checks and free space checks - so every block has been checked on every partition and there are no errors. I have also run a lengthy MEMTEST to check there are no memory errors and that tests fine too - so I am puzzled.
[/li]

There are no problem devices in my hardware setup that are apparent and the random reboots don't seem to coincide with any particular programs running, tasks being performed (ie. heavy or light system usage) etc.

Anyone got any ideas or is it just time to backup, format and reinstall again ?

nosh · « **Reply #38 on:** March 13, 2008, 11:23 PM »

Perhaps it's a corrupted pagefile. Disable paging, run without one for a while and see if the errors persist. If they stop you'll know it's not a hardware issue and could enable it & get a fresh pagefile.

f0dder · « **Reply #39 on:** March 14, 2008, 12:33 AM »

Just to be a damn annoying pedantic sunnuva, you can't disable paging (the x86 feature) - you can disable the pagefile, though

(except if you're running an older windows than XP).

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #40 on:** March 14, 2008, 01:47 AM »

I am doing a reinstall - early today (well yesterday actually) my system randomly rebooted about 15 times in 3 hours.

Enough is enough.

I am pretty sure it must be an installation problem rather than hardware as I have been running other software without any problems from outside Windows, and now I have a backup installed (of a fairly early install on this hardware when it was new) the problems seem to have disappeared even if I do multiple stress test applications on the system.

Frustrating though as I can't really afford the time or hassle at the moment.

Armando · « **Reply #41 on:** March 14, 2008, 02:27 AM »

Wow... Reinstalling... from scratch?

But... if you can't fix the problem otherwise.

I feel your pain -- it's soooo time consuming when you have lot's of little customizations to take care of.

(I know some like to "reinstall", but I avoid it like plague. I remember my days with 95, 98 and NT 4.0... Reinstalling almost once a month. Now it's more once every 3 years... and more, hopefully. Thanks to images backup and other similar technologies)

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #42 on:** March 14, 2008, 02:36 AM »

That'll teach me to archive backups properly. The trouble is I have so much stuff on my discs that there is little space to do backups and I end up with so many programs installed (many with huge amounts of data) that it is impractical to do backups with anything less than a large hard drive!

(I should add that one of the reasons I have so much crap on my hard discs is that I never delete anything - my house is like that too with every inch of floor space covered in piles of books, CD, DVDs and all sorts of other junk ...)

It shouldn't be too bad - when I set up the system from scratch as new I did a backup once I had most drivers installed and after installing and activating Windows and MS Office. So at least I don't have to go through the hassle of reactivating those.

I also have Adobe Premium CS 2 installed and I managed to deactivate the previous install so I can easily reactivate this version.

There are a load of things to reinstall (not least huge numbers of Windows/Office updates - roll on XP SP3!) and update quite a few drivers that are no out of date but at least it isn't a totally from scratch install.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #43 on:** March 14, 2008, 12:42 PM »

Argh ... it looks like it must be hardware!!

I left the machine running last night when I went to bed - all it was doing was a 5 part CHKDSK on two large external USB drives and when I came down this morning the damn thing had rebooted.

I could really do without the lets test it for a week with only one extra bit of kit approach. The trouble is that the random reboots are just that - I can have 10 in one day and then none for a week so it is really difficult to pin down what exactly is going on.

Anyone any suggestions for a quicker way to identify the source of the problem?

I have done complete disc scans to check they are not the problem and they seem fine. Given that the SATA and ATA drives in my system work properly it is unlikely to be the disk controller.
I have run extended MEMTEST+ sessions on the RAM without any problems showing up.
There are no graphics glitches that I am aware of (running 2 x NVidia 7300 cards at standard clock rates in SLi mode).
There are no sound or video glitches so I'd guess the Audigy2 car I have installed is OK (the onboard sound is disabled).
I have been having glitches with my USB Wifi adapter dropping connection or disabling itself so that is one suspect - or maybe the USB interface on the mobo - but I have other devices plugged into the same onboard 'hub' without problems occurring.
I have an external 400Gb Seagate USB2 drive which I have been using heavily for creating DVD ISO files, storing and manipulating video files with no problems but running CHKDSK seems to be causing an issue (each time I run it the computer reboots at the moment - about the only consistent effect). Howevere if I run the usual 3 part CHDKSK no error show up and running CHKDSK from a boot CD doesn't seem to cause an issue ???
I have a good quality power supply with plenty of power - but when it does reboot it is like pressing the reset button on the case - could it be a PSU glitch? How can I tell.
There are various other USB addons that seem to work without problems.
For me the prime suspect is the USB Wifi adapter that keeps playing sill buggers. The router is rock solid, bever disconnects and has no problems with two other computers in the house (one using a Wifi PCI card, the other an ethernet cable to the router). Unfortunately the location of the computer couldn't be worse located for trying out a wired connect and pulling the USB adapter plug and anyway I haven't got enough ethernet cable to reach. To move the computer is like death by a thousand cables!

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #44 on:** March 14, 2008, 06:31 PM »

Update: OK how does this sound ...

I used Ultimate Boot CD to run various stress tests outside windows (CPU, a variety of memory tests, hard disk diagnostic test). The only problem I encountered was that a number of these tools don't like USB keyboards!

Then I restored the backup I made of my 'faulty' system and pulled the wireless USB adapter and started running stress tests in Windows. I had the following running simultaneously for an hour and didn't get a single error or problem of any kind:

NVidia's nTune stability test (includes CPU, Graphics, Memory stressing)
MagicISO hosting a DVD image - played through a desktop app (so video and hard disc IO)
Windows Media Player playing a U2 album
Creative MediaPlayer playing another album
iTunes playing video through QuickTime (a resource hog even under normal circumstances)
Two different monitoring tools for CPU/Memory loads and temperatures.

Has my system got a problem if it can take that lot hammering away for an hour ?

I have plugged my USB wifi adapter in again but this time via a front access USB socket (rather than a back panel socket) - seems fine now.

Out of curiosity ... the USB adapter has a very short chord (it is really designed as a laptop adapter) and when plugged into the back of my tower has to sit on the floor or on top of the case (right above the PSU). I don't think there should be any radio interference between the PSU and adapter (as the PSU should be well shielded) but could this be an issue that could cause a malfunction that may hard reset my system ?? Anyone got any opinion??

cmpm · « **Reply #45 on:** March 15, 2008, 02:51 AM »

I've heard that power supply to the USB ports can affect some things.
Probably heard it here.
Don't know if it's adjustable either.

But besides that. I'd post the complete details of the problem here.

http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Networking-f11.html

They seem to be handling the traffic pretty good.
And having some more minds involved that know what you are saying would help imo.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #46 on:** March 15, 2008, 03:06 AM »

Thanks I'll take a look.

It looks like it is related to a USB device - and maybe one of the built in mobo hubs because after running the battery of stress tests on the system with no problem I plugged in the WiFi adapter again and within an hour or so started to see reboots again.

cmpm · « **Reply #47 on:** March 15, 2008, 04:31 AM »

Heck I'd just post a link to this thread.
Save a lot of typing.

If networking isn't the best place for the problem they will tell you where to post it.

They are very good when they have the needed info.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #48 on:** March 15, 2008, 12:14 PM »

I have just stripped out all of the drivers from my system and a load of applications that never get used and then reinstalled the drivers associated with WiFi and also Network shared drives and left the machine chuntering all night doing lots of intensive stuff (with the WiFi attached and logged in) and (fingers crossed) it is still doing what it should this morning.

I also moved my paging files (64Mb on my Windows drive, the rest on the first partition of another drive), did and offline defrag to make sure they were fixed size and suitably placed on the drive and guess what - not one single event logged (good or bad) in the event logs all night. Well thats a first!

cranioscopical · « **Reply #49 on:** March 15, 2008, 03:56 PM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on March 15, 2008, 12:14 PM

not one single event logged (good or bad) in the event logs all night. Well thats a first!

Sounds hopeful... fingers crossed.
This sort of thing always ceates contradictary reactions in me; one wants to know the exact cause of the problem but, then again, it's such a relief when it just goes away!