Your system has recovered from a serious error

Hey, often when I'm running torrents here my PC just shuts itself off and restarts. Gives me the "Your PC had recovered from a serious error" message. Doesn't happen when I've got torrents going from any other sites, only this one. Now, this is the only site I've ever seeded shows on, and its when I've got windows open for the shows I'm seeding that I encounter the shutdown/serious error recovery message. Any clue as to what the problem might be? Sometimes everything will be fine for 36 hours, sometimes won't have a problem at all, but still annoying - especially when I bump a thread for a show I'm seeding telling people to jump on now cuz I'm going to move on, and then a couple hours later when I'm at work and can't do anything about it the home PC does a restart and I'm not seeding the show any more.

[TheMamba]

What OS are you on?

Everytime your computer crashes (or comes across errors) it should create an error log. First step would be to look at the error log and see what it says or what the error was. I'm at work right now and don't remember the steps off the top of my head on how to get to the error log....and I don't have access to it here on my work computer.

My second question(s) would be how much space do you have on your hard drive, how long since your last defrag?

When you're seeding or leaching, the computer is constantly writing to and reading the hard disk. So....a far off possibility is that your hard drive is going bad.

Doesn't happen when I've got torrents going from any other sites, only this one.

That has me puzzled.

Yeah I get the error log, looked at it and it made no sense to me. Next time I get it I'll post the log so maybe someone with the tech knowledge can explain it to me.

Only a couple of GB space left on the hard drive.... so many shows yet to burn. Was wondering if that was the issue, since if I've got only one torrent running the PC seems to be fine. Two, it shuts down after awhile. Three, it shuts down while still checking the existing data for the third torrent.

PC is only about a year old, so the hard drive better not be going bad yet.

[Rider]

Originally Posted by toys

Yeah I get the error log, looked at it and it made no sense to me. Next time I get it I'll post the log so maybe someone with the tech knowledge can explain it to me.

Only a couple of GB space left on the hard drive.... so many shows yet to burn. Was wondering if that was the issue, since if I've got only one torrent running the PC seems to be fine. Two, it shuts down after awhile. Three, it shuts down while still checking the existing data for the third torrent.

PC is only about a year old, so the hard drive better not be going bad yet.

To me it sounds like either something with your hard drives or heat. The part where it shuts down while chcking files sounds like a heat issue to me. File checking causes your processor to max out which causes heat. The more torrents you run the harder your drive is working the more heat it generates.

It could be number of things. The log might help.

[feralicious]

Yep, maybe your CPU is overheating. That will cause a PC to reboot on its own. There's utilities to test this. I've never tried one, but here's a google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=CPU+t...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Though I've never had a message like that when mine rebooted, it just booted up normally. If it is that, there are ways of keeping it cool. Heatsinks, gel, I don't really know the details, but if you google you can find out. You can also get a metal thing to put around your HD that keeps it cool. You might be able to add fans depending on your case. They make some that will fit into one of the external drive bays. Here's a couple sites I bought stuff from at good prices if you need it.
http://www.coolerguys.com/
http://www.xpcgear.com/

Also, have you added any new components lately? If so, is your power supply big enough to handle it? If you're not sending enough power out then things will start failing and eventually the power supply will die.

Since I've gotten a new case with 7 fans and a bigger power supply I haven't had that problem. (Just a 250gb HD FULL of music that won't read after I moved it over )

And finally, you might want to open the case and blow out any dust that may have collected in your exhaust/intake fans and your CPU fan with a can of air regardless of what it is if you've never done that.

[Andy L]

It definitely sounds like overheating... but there's also a small chance that it could be a faulty motherboard. A few years ago, I built a computer which would reboot randomly - once I had replaced the motherboard with another make, it worked fine. But if you've had the PC for a year already, it's pretty unlikely.

No new components, so the power shouldn't be a problem. I guess it could be overheating, although the pc is in the coolest room in the house where its usually around 70 or cooler. Here's the error stuff it gives me after it reboots -

Error signature
BCCode:77 BCP1:C000009C BCP2:C000009C BCP3:00000000
BCP4:04101000 OSVer:5_1_2600 SP:2_0 Product:768_1

Error Report Contents
The following files will be included in this error report:
COCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER1cda.dir00\Mini121704-01.dmp
COCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER1cda.dir00\sysdata.xml

lol, thats supposed to be C"colon"DOCUME etc., not C OCUME

[feralicious]

Originally Posted by toys

Error Report Contents
The following files will be included in this error report:
COCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER1cda.dir00\Mini121704-01.dmp
COCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER1cda.dir00\sysdata.xml

How dare they mock you with those smilies!

Try a CPU temperature test. You can download a software one somewhere for free.

[feralicious]

Oh, and even if it's in the coolest room, if it's constantly working and the airflow isn't too great, the components are going to heat up. How many fans do you have on the case? A lot of cases only have one in the back and if it's on all the time that may not be enough. It's good to have intake fans on the front and side/bottom and exhaust fans on the back ( and some have a blowhole on the top as well). So if you just have one on the back, make sure it's an exhaust fan and then if you have an open 5 1/2" bay you can add a fan unit that has 2-3 little intake fans in it and that will blow the cool air passt your drives and mobo and stuff absorbing the heat and the increased air flow will get the warm air out of your system faster.

Installed a motherboard monitoring program - which I'd never heard of before and I find kind of cool - so I can monitor the PC temp. Room temp is 69 degrees, but right now the PC temp is 89 even though its not running anything. I do only have one exhaust fan in the back. The airflow is okay but not great. Got an empty bay up front, so most likely will be getting another fan for the front to help cool. Also will be taking the case off and blowing out any and all dust inside this weekend. Right now though I'm gonna start up a torrent and see how much it raises the PC temp.

From 89 to 91... now up to 93. Am I a huge geek to be fascinated watching my PC temp climb as a result of torrenting a show? Sitting here wondering what excess stress we're all putting on our PCs with music downloading.

[TheMamba]

Well, your temp isn't too high. I'm assuming that it's reading the Socket temperature. But, heat was another thing that came to mind after I first posted.

Give you an idea on temp - my computer used to get wonky around 60 C - 143 F. Now with my new CPU cooler it runs around 38 C - 100 F.

I don't know what error log you're looking at, but try this.

In Windows XP, go to your start menu and then Administrative tools. Select Event Viewer. Up pops a new window. Click on System. On the right hand side of the window should be a list of "events." Look for the one around the time that your computer crashed - there should be a big red Stop sign or something. Double click that event and a new window will pop up. There will be a description on the bottom....up towards the top will be an Even ID.

What does all that say?


Other thing: the handful of gigs left to spare MAY be the problem....depending on how big your Swap File is.

The easy and inexpensive way would be to sit down and burn a shit load of shows off of your hard drive, delete them, defrag, and see if the problem persists.

[wattershed]

It may very well be a heat/cooling issue, but there's one thing nobody's mentioned so far in this thread...

What brand/model ethernet card do you have? There are some ethernet cards that simply buckle under the strain of a constantly maxed out pipe, either up or downloading.

You say it doesn't happen on other torrent sites you use, but it could be that you just have more people on the torrents seeded here. Not saying this is definitely the problem, but if the temperature remains steady while the problem still persists it's something to look in to.

Did the event viewer, found an error around 8:30AM telling me there was a bad block on my hard disk. Then around 9:50 a whole bunch of logs telling me that programs had restarted, including a suspicious one saying the computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. Went to defrag, since I can't recall when I last did that - and I couldn't defrag, didn't have the available space on the hard drive to run it. Got rid of a bunch of stuff and defragging now. I'll let you know if I still get any shutdowns/reboots in a day or two or if the defragging and file deletions solve the problem. (oh, and PC temp is holding steady at 93, even after running a torrent for a couple hours, so I'm ready to rule out temperature)