Full System Crash and Auto-Reboot : Why??

Hello Everyone!

I went to two Smilie websites to get some freebie smilies which I like. I downloaded about eighteen of them as gif files. After doing so my PC lost the sound for a minute. Next, I went to open Irfan Viewer and I got a box saying that my system resources were too low to open it. Fine. I went to My Computer and right-clicked it, to look at the Performance tab. It said my resources were 63% free. Good. I then went offline, turned off several applications (for online uses). I then right-clicked on My Computer again, clicked the Performance Tab and my screen went black for a minute. The system then rebooted automatically. Ouch!

It seems to be working okay now. I went to the folder that has the new smilie gifs and ran them through NAV 2002 (which is completely up to date). Clean bill. Hmmmm.

Understandably, my OS is Win98se which crashes as often as the sun sets! But this one has me "scratching my head." Huh??

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, post them here. I plan to do a FULL system check tonight. I do one every week, sometimes more often. The last one was four days ago.

Here are the addresses of the smilie sites:

clicksmilies.com

and another

plauder-smilies.de

**You will have to "copy and paste" to use them. (Just put www in front.)

Best regards from Larry!

 

Hmm now that you mention this, I had almost this same thing but wasn't doing anything with smilies and such...

I was hosting a game of "Red Alert2" and talking on Roger Wilco with one of my Dutch gaming buddies who was on his way to my server. Shortly after he came into my server and before I was able to start the game, the same thing happened... Screen went blank and then reboot... I do not understand it at all; but I went to housecall and did an online scan since I could find nothing with Spybot or AVG... I found nothing and it hasn't happened again.

I also use WIN98SE... But this is the first time it happened. Makes me kinda paranoid.. or something.

 

I think some of those are best left to janie ..but why downloand them when you can link to them

Right click on any that you see in the forum and you will have the url.



http://www.click-smilie.de/sammlung/party/party038.gif

 

http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1996-26.html

 

Hello Everyone!

Thanks for your answers. I appreciate it. Detox, it's nice to have company!...John, I wanted to have them not just link to them. What if the link is dropped? Then what?....LowWaterMark, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry!"....and to gummybear, how can an oversized ICMP packet cause a crash after I'm offline?

I ran my checks. Nothing. Normal. However, at one point I did have six windows open. Each uses some RAM (and these had a lot of animations). I suspect that when I closed them, they weren't closed (even if they did not show on the running apps). I have noticed that whenever my available RAM drops below 20%, I start getting those messages about not enough resources. So, even though it said that I was using 37%, it must have been more like 87%!

This is a possible explanation? I don't know. Win98se is, from my perspective, very "feline." Sometimes it does things just because it does.

Thanks again from Larry!

 

Hmm well the RAM thing can't be it for me; I have 1024 MB of ECC DDR RAM...

Well ok we all know I bragged for weeks maybe even months when I got my machine built ;-) (proud daddy)

but the point is.. I'm basically never short of resources no matter what I do...

Then again, there could be different things causing a similar "reaction" or whatever we would call this reboot thing...

I still haven't experienced it again yet... And I'm not really investigatin because I just don't know where to look since everything looks clean.

 

DETOX

whats with the number thats being displayed.....icq pager.....

 

The little flowers are my ICQ number and online/offline status ;-)

 

DETOX

ok.....just want to make sure it wasn't anything important........flowers? all numbers = 6 digits......

on my way out now...wont be back for a while.....wishing you well..

 

Well if ya se this take it easy ;-)

though I'm not sure why my ICQ flowers don't show on yours, and ICQ number is more then 6 digits too.. hmmm

 

You maybe want to try the software Jooske mentioned in the PE thread. I have been trying it out and If Javacool and this guy join forces oeeeooooo I would guess some more cool software.

Fabertoys is cool. I wish you could set it to monitor certian processes and give a visual and sound warning if those cercumstances are met.
Anyway with Fabertoys you sure can terminate processes very quickly

 

Hi Prince..the answer of course is that if the site goes down the links are history...but by that time so it the thread you used them on...I would consider putting some in a safe place on the net to store them..but not on my PC if possible and not on a Win98 box.

Just a suggestion.

 

Detox..how do you get Win 98 to recognize all that RAM

 

Primrose - Well it's a custom machine and when I asked the guys who built it if it would be able to; they said "sure, when we are done."

And indeed, it does. Although I don't understand exactly what they did, there is something called "Winfast" and another called "Winfox" on my machine that they put here. More reasons I need to quit putting off getting a drive imager.. argh

Anyway I can't promise one of those is what does it; Winfox seems to mostly relate to display properties.

 

CURSES!!!

EXPLICITIVES and other such nasties, listed one after the other!!!

That's right, it happened to me AGAIN! I was browsing another forum I loko at now and then, and talking on Roger Wilco, when I chose a thread my screen went black but it had a line of green dots at the top this time; then the auto-reboot!!!

WHen it was an isolated incident I thought nothing of it; then Prince had it, I thought some more, now it's happened to me twice and still nothing on any scans! I don't understand at all; the only thing I was using both times was Roger Wilco but it's a very old version (pre-gamespy - barf) and I have used it for YEARS!

 

Hi Detox,

but the point is.. I'm basically never short of resources no matter what I do...

It is my understanding that ram and the resource problem on win9x machines are not related. No matter how much ram you have, the only way to handle the resource problem, is to run less programs at the same time. A design problem that Microsoft says is not repairable, or at least not repairable without a lot of redesign by everyone including the 3rd party programmers. My machine is about at the limit because of all the security apps running when online. If you know something I don't, please advise.

As far as the black screen with the green dots, I have seen that when downloading with DLExpert. Difference is, no auto reboot, computer locks up tight and must be restarted with reset button. Sometimes the three finger salute will work, but not usually. I have sounds enabled in DLExpert and this always happens when it is splitting threads. If I turn off the sounds in DLExpert, this does not seem to happen. Different scenario than you, but thought I would mention it just because of the black screen thing.

 

I'm not familiar with this particular phenomenom, but Vet is right about resources. Windows 9x has limited resources and has little to do with memory. That was the main reason I switched to Win2k. It has limitless resources and does not suffer the BSODs of 9x.
Fine tuning and limiting open programs is the best solution for not crashing.
I imagine you know that frequent reboots restore the resources and that is what many people do.

 

Hmm well I do shut this computer down every night and start it around noon every day; but the thing that is bothering me is this has never happened before; just these two times in the past week or two! I've had the computer almost a year now I believe... And I've really had lost more going on at once than what I had going these times... This was only a web forum and Roger Wilco; I've hosted 16 player games and hosted Roger Wilco and had ICQ running and been browsing 3-4 webpages all at once and not had this happen...

I'm not saying that what you are talking about isn't what happened... Just that if it is I don't know why it would manifest now and like this!

Err BTW one thing I just thought of; I havent defragmented in a while and I'll do that in the morning.. The old puter was set to do it auto but it was always on while I decided this one was too valuable to be running while I was asleep and maybe all the fans went out (hehe)

Sooooo hopefully a good defrag will fix things up... My sys resources do look low compared to usual.

Sry so long a post :-/

 

http://www.forrestandassociates.co.uk/pcforrest/resources.html

Something to read about resources, if you are interested.

By the way, I am not suggesting the resource thing is your problem, because I don't know the answer to that. Just wondering if you had discovered a secret. They also say win9x can only handle so much memory(512mb?), but you seem to have gotten around that!