[sintan]

ok, i tried a different video card and everything's fine. the ram passed memtest 7 times (took hours!)
so that's a geforce 8800 GTX down the drain.

thanks for all the help in pinning this problem down!

i might try a radeon this time, any suggestions for under £200 (around $300) or am i better off sticking with nvidia

[philbar71]

well a gtx 260 is in your price range.

Newegg.com - EVGA 896-P3-1255-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

also what were the temps of the 8800gtx it could have been simply overheating.

[sintan]

how does the gtx 260 compare to radeon hd 4870?

the temperature was 62 idle, never got far enough to test it during 3dmark, i'll give it a wirl when the systems cooled down for a while. the fan seemed fine however, so not sure what i could do about it....
the card i borrowed is an 8800GT OC and thats 60 idle, so i assume thats the standard...

it rebooted again!

this morning, after running 3dmark and memtest all last night without problems.

no doubt my video card was the main culprit as is evident by the major improvement, but i think something else must be damaged too.

my guess is the mobo has problems now, due to the static i mentioned earlier...
also, as i mentioned in my first post, the pc has been rebooting on occasion for a long time, so maybe the PSU is guilty also...

Ok, i've got an EVGA geforce GTX 260 Core 216 on the way (thanks for that philbar71) with a corsair 650w power supply.
will the card be compatible with my gibabyte ga-p35-ds3r mobo?

[QuaziBee]

you should have a lifetime warranty on your gtx. send that bad boy back in.

[sintan]

it was OEM, came in nothing but bubble wrap!
i got it from a large company though so i'll look into it

[Baez]

Even OEM products have a limited warranty on them.

[Setsuna F. Seyei]

the constant rebooting could also be due to a virus called Lovesand. the virus gets in and causes your system to randomly shut down and reboot the way that you have described. as far as i know the only way to rid your self of this virus is to do a system wipe anthe a clean install of your os withhout being connected to the net while doing this. iknow about this because my computer had the same prob back in '07 and i had to do a full sys resore to rid myself of it. (Norton and McAfee found it but couldn't get rid of It)

[Baez]

You cannot only focus on one virus considering there are hundereds of thousands of viruses today.

[Mak213]

I am a Microsoft MVP for Windows. I will flat out tell you as will anyone else who knows Windows that a format and reinstall is the very LAST option. there are so many things that can be done before a format.

Also if you think Norton or McAfee are good anti virus programs then you need to do some online research about the catch rate of those compared to Kaspersky, NOD32, Avast, AVG, BitDefender just to name a few.

Congrats your a graduate. But that does not make you a expert. I am not a expert in any means either. But i can tell you for a fact that i know what i jsut stated above will be echoed by everyone.

Not to mention any decent anti virus will have the definations to block the Lovesand by default. Since it is now 2 years old.

[sintan]

@Setsuna F. Seyei
unless the lovesand virus can infect the hardwares firmware, its highly unlikely the pc is infected, as the reboots happen during the actual bootup, during bios screens etc.

i ordered a new motherboard to make better use of the new 2.0 pci-e card and my 45nm cpu, so i intend to do a full format and reinstall anyway

and i completely agree about the anti-virus programs. i wouldn't install norton or mcAfee on anyone's system, they're bulky, intrusive and ineffective. kaspersky all the way