Restart while idle

[Krazeee]

I've been running this computer since Nov, 05 when I built it (thx btw to you all for input during building process). Just recently it seems to restart while idle. Ive never been around when it happens, which is usually while Im out of the house for a few hours, or asleep. So I'm certain that 99% of the time that it restarts, its simply idling. Now that Im thinking about it, it has restarted once while playing a game, but majority of the time its during idle.

I've been reading some posts and PSU sounds a likely culprit (which would suck since I spent the money on a nice Antec). I also took some advice from Glc in another thread to turn the "restart on fatal errors" setting to OFF so it will hopefully give me a code or blue screen of sorts.

When I come back to my computer after one of these restarts it brings up one of those Microsoft error reporting windows. I send it off and it then brings up a page telling me that it restarted due to a hardware malfunction, and then lists 4 possibles. PSU, CPU, MoBo, Ram.
It also says that it restarted because of a protocal in Intel CPUs...which is odd, since Im running an Athlon 64.

Any thoughts are obviously welcome (hence the post, heh). Thanks in advance.

[EzyStvy]

Are you using standby or hibernate?
Do you have brown outs in your area?
Does it happen every night?

[glc]

You can test the ram with memtest86+.

www.memtest.org

[Krazeee]

No brownouts that Im aware of. I dont use anything really, I just let the computer sit there and it goes to screen saver, then standby/hybernate...whichever it uses I guess. And it seems fairly consistent, seems most every morning for the past few days. Ill get memtest tomorrow morning. Thanks guys, Ill let you know how it goes.

[Krazeee]

Put the computer on Standby lastnight and got to find it snug as a bug in a rug. Ran memtest (different kind though, works in windows and seems to only test unused RAM) for about a half hour. Says it checked it over 350%, with no errors. If you think using the memtest86 would produce more accurate results lemme know and Ill do that instead.

So as far as I can tell, the RAM is not the issue, that leaves PSU, Mobo, CPU. Any thoughts on how I might check their stability?

[Krazeee]

Well, it just did it. I was messin with my CD rack and I heard a beep, I turn to look and sure enough, the computer was rebooting. Apparently turning off the reboot on fatal error thing didnt work.

The computer was under zero load. I had written the above post about 5 minutes before and then sat down to read my book (wheel of time, book 10, very enjoyable).

Anyways, still dumbfounded.

Heres the site MS sends me to: http://oca.microsoft.com/en/response...bf4ef3&SID=134

[EzyStvy]

Look in Event Viewer and see what it says..

[Krazeee]

So what am I looking for? I see at the left, Information, Warning, and Error listings, with time and source and other info. Im guessing that the errors and warnings are a start, but Im not sure what I might gleen from it.

[EzyStvy]

Look for things like:

While system was idle - system crashed and burned.
System shut down because the hacker connected to your pc made a boo boo.
System decided it was tired and shut down.

Sorry, too much sugar this after noon. Look for things within the time frame of the shutdown you witnessed....Then look for other identical events to see if you can see a pattern of which service is crashing...