Hi everyone. New here and I come with a story.
story begins
Symptoms:
Every morning my PC restarts/bsods/crashes around 10-15 times. It’s completely random - happens during boot, after booting, when system idle or being used, in windows,in linux - there is NO freaking pattern. Occasionally the computer just halts - everything including the mouse pointer - and stays still as a painted picture.
However, the system gets stable after a few crashes. The problem happens only after the computer is switched off for a few hours (I switch it off at night before sleep - unlike some of my friends :P). I also suspect it to crash more on cooler days - environmental temperature (crashes inversely proportional to temp?).
Other info:
With SpeedFan (software) the CPU cores seems to be below 35C at first boot (well I couldn’t find the exact nor a close estimate of the initial temperature…since the comp is busy restarting itself). Currently it shows 40-43C which seems normal.
Other than the random crash, there is not much info. There is no beeps (which I think would have been due to RAM problems). for BSODs, windows event viewer ->Hardware events gives a “Crtical error: The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.” which isn’t helpful.
Steps taken:
Suspecting a problem with the power supply unit on the PC, I replaced it with a new one. But it didn’t help.
story ends
Specs:
System is acer aspire m5610, with core2duo e4400. No overclocking, didn’t update bios. (Any other information needed?).
What do you think? Is the processor screwed, cooling problem or something else?
Hi,
I would try running a memory test to see if any of the RAM has gone bad. You can use a program called memtest86 for that. Also, when this starts to happen, have you tried booting into safemode to see if that is stable? If it is, it may be a driver problem or other software problem as safe mode only uses minimal driver’s and services when it starts. I would then try running a checkdisk/scandisk to see if the hard drive is giving errors. Where it is happening with both windows and linux, I dont think it would be a software fault as they shouldnt be sharing files. If they are on the same hard drive, you may want to try doing a clean install of one to see if it is stable, then do the other one as well. If you have a different video card or onboard video maybe try that as well to rule out a video card problem. If that doesnt work, you can try doing a minimal boot, with just the cpu, video card, and a single stick of ram to see if it will boot or if it starts rebooting again. Try moving the ram to a different slot as well, and swap ram stick too, but do that one at a time so you can rule out ram and ram slots as problems. If you are still having problems at that point, and you have already replaced power supply and video card, the only other things it could be are the motherboard or the processor. It may be worth reapplying/thermal paste to the cpu and its heatsink.
I had a similar problem with one of my computers with freezes happening 5-10 times when first trying to boot, but once it was on, worked fine. It turned out to be a bad motherboard for me, and once I replaced it everything worked with no more issues.
Safe mode didn’t help…+ BSODs most of the time doesn’t report any .sys files + a few times, the restarts happened at boot menu. I now suspect the RAM, since a few restarts prevented the computer from booting, giving annoying beeps.
I don’t think the hard drive is the issue, the OSes are in different drives…I will try a scandisk anyway.
Another thing I didn’t mention is that I have a few broken USB ports…but I don’t think that can affect anything.
“It may be worth reapplying/thermal paste to the cpu and its heatsink”. Hmm..this one’s hard for me to do. I’ll have to give the task to some comp repair shop.
Another possibility is dust..yes this place is dusty. I have cleaned the fan and blown air at the mobo/cpu with a vacuum cleaner. Previously, it did show some positive effects…or was it just a coincidence (?)
Will post back after trying the various steps you have mentioned. Thanks for the info 
So I ran memtest86 and it spotted no errors.
Removed all USB devices except mouse and keyboard and the problem still remained.
However, I changed the mouse and the computer refused to boot (not even showing the boot menu).I think a BIOS update can fix it.
Here are the BIOS updates, there are 4 versions…one for linux,1 for winxp vista dos,1 for winxp vista win and last one for..intentionally confusing me? I thought BIOS was independent of OS!? Now which one to choose…
I posted a while ago a question on BIOS update.Where did it go?
Anyway, I will repeat.
I ran memtest86 and it spotted no errors.
I removed all USB devices except mouse and keyboard, and the problem still persisted.
However, when I plugged-in a new mouse, the computer refused to boot..that is not even booting up to the boot menu. Going to update BIOS and will ping back.
Fixed this. The problem was just a loosely clamped RAM chip. It has been the same since the day I bought the computer (stupid ACER) - and I didn’t notice it (and when I did I ‘assumed’ that it wouldn’t have been the cause of the problem). Anyway, recently (2 months back) I noticed it (again), so I removed it and clamped it back in tightly and the computer has been smoothly sailing till date.
What to say…simple things takes so long to fix. Anyway, thanks for all the tips.