Windows 2000/Xp Reboot

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October 8th, 2003, 07:09 PM
SDK

Windows 2000/Xp Reboot

This will be a quick tutorial. I wish to explain why Windows 2000 and XP machine reboot alone. Whenever you ask a tech why your machine reboots by itself, most tech will automatically think of a hardware problem. Under Windows 95/98, it's true. Under Windows NT, 2000 and XP, it's false. Those OS come with an option that most people forget. If you go under System Properties in Control Panel, under the Advanced Section, under Start and Recovery Setting, you have an option that is turn on by default on Windows 2000 and XP name "Automatically Restart".This option enable to OS to reboot by itself whenever a Blue Screen of Death happen. This lead to a lot of tech to blame hardware for a problem that under Windows!! If the option "Write an event to the system Log" is on, by default it's on, Windows will log the event. After the reboot, you can check the event under the Source "Save Dump". A Blue Screen of Death will a lot created a memory dump. Check this thread to know more about memory dump.

In the event viewer, you'll see the error code for your Blue Screen of Death. Most of the time, Windows 2000 and XP will crash because of bad memory or bad drivers. My recommendation is to turn off the option "Automatically Restart" option on all machines you run to save you a lot of trouble later unless you have a very good memory to remember this tutorial. :)
October 10th, 2003, 03:50 AM
crashburn181

This is great I just recently started using xp another thing i did'nt know about xp
October 10th, 2003, 07:44 AM
c0bra

me too I have alot to learn
October 10th, 2003, 08:08 AM
nihil

Right now, I would say the most likely cause of re-booting is malware, it will do it about every two minutes.

Boot into safe mode and run your (updated!) AV. This tends to negate the malware's stealthing & armour.

Cheers
October 10th, 2003, 02:32 PM
dinowuff

SDK is correct about 2000/XP's default being set to automatically reboot. I have two boxes one NT 4 and the other 2000 that started rebooting. Since both are production boxes I needed to leave the setting for reboot alone and relied on the %systemroot%\memorydmp.txt for troubleshooting. Neither machine was infected with virus or malware, rather one was a bad video card, the other was a failure in a SCSI card.

The following link http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;282504 helped solved one issue. The other resolution was not on M$ site. (Google)

If you can change the default setting so the box does not reboot, this is best. the memorydmp.txt file can be huge and sometimes corrupt - depending on the cause of the crash. Also, if a SCSI card or back plane is failing - you really don't want the box rebooting all the time.
October 10th, 2003, 02:44 PM
SDK

Nihil and is malware, spyware, ad-ware! ;) How much post he's taking about that.
October 10th, 2003, 05:31 PM
nihil

Hi SDK,

Yes, I do tend to talk about malware a lot. Your advice to switch off the autorestart in WIN 2000 and XP is sound. I was just pointing out that this can be caused by malware, so if you turn off the feature, and it still happens............perhaps this is what you should look at next?

Cheers
October 10th, 2003, 06:02 PM
MemorY

this is for someone who would be willing to spend money on a product but have any of yo considered VMware ?

this is a post i posted on IntroBee: http://intobee.conforums.com
a user asked me to kind of explain what it is ...

Quote:

VMware Workstation runs multiple operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Novell NetWare, simultaneously on a single PC in fully networked.

Let's say u want to test new hardware ..so you want to test if it is compatible with more then one OS ..so you install a guest operating system and see if it work on that one ... log onto Linux on the same machine and test it ...log onto Novell and test it there ..it's easier to test software and hardware with a few machine

BEST PART

Quote:

VMware Workstation gives students the freedom to experiment with new applications or tools. With undoable disks, they can try "what if" scenarios without the worry of trashing the test system or having to rebuild it - virtual machines can be restored with a mouse click. Instructors/corporate trainers can create a library of pre-configured training environments, easily distribute them to students, and can quickly restore machines to a clean state for their next class. Sales and marketing professionals can distribute demo software without installation or compatibility problems and demo complex or multi-tier applications on a single laptop.

i think this one is understandable.

Also you do NOT need to partition your hard drive . VMware uses your computers file system and creates files that map on a virtual machines disk drives. And you do NOT need to boot ..you can change systems with mouse clicks.

VMware costs $329 US dollars (packed sitribution or 299$ (electronic distibution) You can also get the evalutaion version here http://www.vmware.com/download/index.html#eval 30 days .

You can get more support here: http://www.vmware.com/support/

i hope i answered some of your question . If you have more please ask.

THREAD located here : http://introbee.conforums.com/index....num=1064069716
October 10th, 2003, 08:45 PM
infernon

Just another key point about VMWare : If you have a machine with some serious memory (about a gig or so) you can run multiple virtual machines and network all of them. I created a Windows 2000 network with VMWare to study for my MCSE. There was also an article in Windows and .NET magazine about clustering virtual machines. I'm sad to say that I didn't read it, but you can probably find more info on it at http://www.winnetmag.com with a simple search.
October 10th, 2003, 08:58 PM
LarrySmith

Your post is accurate. BUT if the power good signal to the CPU is interupted the machine will reboot. That's what a reset button does..it interupts that signal from the power supply to the cpu. A good way to determine between the two is watch how it post when it comes back up.If it appears to be a full post(as in the memory being checked) the chances are ..you DO have a hardware issue...bad power supply...bad cpu or cpu fan or even bad memory. If it just does a warm reboot it is probally software. This isn't written in stone but it is a good guideline to troubleshoot reboots.
October 10th, 2003, 09:01 PM
mohaughn

Quote:

Originally posted here by dinowuff
SDK is correct about 2000/XP's default being set to automatically reboot. I have two boxes one NT 4 and the other 2000 that started rebooting. Since both are production boxes I needed to leave the setting for reboot alone and relied on the %systemroot%\memorydmp.txt for troubleshooting. Neither machine was infected with virus or malware, rather one was a bad video card, the other was a failure in a SCSI card.

The following link http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;282504 helped solved one issue. The other resolution was not on M$ site. (Google)

If you can change the default setting so the box does not reboot, this is best. the memorydmp.txt file can be huge and sometimes corrupt - depending on the cause of the crash. Also, if a SCSI card or back plane is failing - you really don't want the box rebooting all the time.

You do realize that if you change this setting so that it does not autoboot the system will just hang at a blue screen until somebody comes along and pushes the button. In production systems having the system reboot is normally the optimal solution as the system tries to take corrective action to fix the problem, rebooting.

In business systems that require high availability I would recommend leaving this setting as it's default. It should also be noted that many Compaq Proliant systems have a BIOS feature to automatically reboot the system when a kernel exception(blue screen) is thrown.