SD5 b184 issue

[JulianL]

SD5 b184 appears to cause spontaneous reboots on my PC. Here are more details cut and pasted from 2 previous threads I contributed to. Do I need to formally file a bug report to get this onto the unresolved issue list?

After about 2 hours running b184 I came back from a meeting to find my computer had rebooted. It had been running perfectly for the last 2 weeks since I last booted it up after coming back from vacation. This is too much of a coincidence not to be SD5.

I can't give a meaningful error report unfortunately because my system auto-rebooted but when I logged back in I got Microsoft messages telling me that it was a device driver problem and I got a browser opened to a Microsoft page that said: "Problem caused by Device Driver... You received this message because a device driver installed on your computer caused the Windows operating system to stop unexpectedly. This type of error is referred to as a "stop error." A stop error requires you to restart your computer."

I am now trying with kernel compatibility mode enabled (yes, I did remember to reboot again) so we'll see how long my system lasts in this mode. I accept this might well be a conflict with Grisoft AVG but none of the other competitors I tried took down the system because of conflicts so I still think this is pretty poor.

After setting kernel compatibility mode my machine ran for almost 2 days but I got a reboot in the early hours of this morning and got up to a rebooted system and the error message from Microsoft saying that Windows had had a serious error due to a device driver and had rebooted.

I'm running XP Pro on an AMD 4200+ based system with 1GB RAM. Also running the latest free versions of ZoneAlarm and AVG. I also run a service called Mozy backup (www.mozy.com) that runs as a Windows service and does an online backup every hour so I suppose that is also a possible conflict. The other item I didn't mention is that I also run Norton Ghost to do full backups to an external hard drive every night.

For now I've uninstalled SD5 and will run with no anti-Spyware for a week just to make sure this isn't a huge coincidence and my PC hasn't just developed a stability problem but I really don't think that is the issue.

- Julian

[AChen]

Hi Julian,

Do the reboots occur after a Smart Update? This problem may be related to the following:

PC constantly needs a reboot after running a Smart Update
Status: Reported
Original Thread: http://www.pctools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46420

The developers are still working on this issue. I will update you once a fix is in place.

[AChen]

Can I also add, if the reboots do not occur after an update, can you confirm if your computer goes into Standby mode/hibernation mode? It may be possible that once it goes into Standby mode/hibernation mode, this causes a reboot.

I will escalate this to the developers to work on a fix.

[JulianL]

Thanks for the replies Anthony. It's pretty hard to give you a good answer because I've never been there when the PC has rebooted, I only know because I come back to a rebooted PC.

From the timings of the reboot I'm 99% sure that it isn't corellated with any SmartUpdate activity. Also, I'm pretty sure it's not putting my PC into standby or hibernate, I don't think those are even enabled on my PC. The wierd thing about the reboots is that if I explicitly shutdown or reboot my PC then 9 times out of 10 it hangs on shutdown and I have to hit the reset button. It's done this ever since I built it 2 or 3 years ago and I'm told it can be an issue with some early AMD mobo/BIOS combos so I just live with it (I hardly ever shut down the PC anyhow). When SD causes the reboot though the system has gone through a full reboot cycle so obviously that device driver error that Microsoft tells me has occured has probably not triggered a "reboot" as such but actually caused a system reset from which the system then did a restart to boot back up to the login prompt.

By the way, this is looking increasingly certain that this is a problem related to SD. So far I'm into day 3 after removing SD5 from my system and it's still rock-solid.

- Julian

[redwolfe_98]

i think the rebooting is occurring after your computer suffers a critical "error".. you can look in your computer's "events".. the "error"-"events" will be listed there and maybe, if you look at the information associated with the "error"-"events", it will let you know what is causing the errors on your computer, which are causing your computer to reboot..

also, you could look in "system", in your "control panel", on the "advanced" tab, then "startup and recovery"/"settings" and see if "automatically restart" is checked, in "system failure"..