i just installed a new motherboard (P4 socket 478) on my computer because the old one went bad, and now the computer reboots at will. sometimes no video will appear and reinstalling the agp card fixes the problem. any help? anyone ever have this problem before?

"i just installed a new motherboard (P4 socket 478) on my computer because the old one went bad, and now the computer reboots at will."

The computer will reboot whenever power goes off and then comes back on. Check your power supply connections to make sure they are secure.

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Steve Stites

the connections are fine.

My computer has recently started rebooting at random times. i just installed a DVD-rom drive, so now I have two hard drives and two cd-rom devices. I didn't plan on this much hardware when built the computer, so I think my power supply may be failing. Does this sound possible?

It could be a power supply problem. It could also be a wrong selection in the Linux kernel. Before getting a new power supply, use a friend's or a neighbor's computer to download Knoppix. If Knoppix can be up, then you have problem in software. If it still has the same problem with Knoppix, then buy a good power supply. Power supplies from Zalman are excellent and cheap. They are better than Antec. It could not hurt to buy an in-line UPS. An in-line UPS cost more than stand-by UPS but in-line UPS are far much better because power is drawn from the battery while the battery is recharging.

forgot to mention something:
it's only been noticed in windows. I don't use linux as much as I should. it's happened three times. Happened twice in two days, then settled down and hes been good for a week until today. It's seriously random, having no conection with anything.

i have the same problem with one of my machines. it runs great when
it runs, but then ranomly reboots.

im not scared of yanking a PC apart one piece at a time to troubleshoot
(in fact that's the only way).

by doing so (wanking... er.. yanking), i've found that the problem
is definitely the power... not the power supply but the connection at the MOBO.

my suggestion:

yank out all of the connections to your HD's, CDs, FDs, etc.

with only your monitor and keyboard connected, you'll get the BIOS screen
if your MOBO and RAM is working properly. Then jiggle (lightly) the main power connector
going into the MOBO. You'll see that this is the problem...

else it's a RAM thing.

else its a GITM

good luck

I have had a similar problem which was related to heat. I cleared any cables touching the motherboard and also secured the heatsink correctly on my cpu. This seemed to resolve my issue....

When my dad went to look for prices on a new PS at a local PC store, the first question they asked was "what's your CPU?" so that must make a big diference. I'll have to look at the box for my athlon 2500+ and see what it says.

The question "what's your CPU?" is not realistic on the power supply selection. Who ever is the sale person that said that is an idiot. Several power supplies do not even come close to the rated wattage. It is better to go with brand names like Antec, Zalman, Enermax, and Power & Cooling. For an AMD system, you need at least 300 watts. High wattage (greater than 300 watts) power supplies are always better for future expansion.

Like what poochdog said, it could be a heat problem.

I am guessing it is the RAM, you could try running memtest from http://www.memtest86.com