What the hell just happened to my computer?

breadmonkey

I left my computer to go the kitchen. I came back no less than 1 minute later and it had spontaneously (sp?) rebooted itself.

While restarting, something like this came up:

>something< FAT32
The volume is dirty
Verifying files and folders

Then when it finished doing that, it said "window did not find and problems" or something to that effect. (I'm using Windows 2000 Professional).

My virus definitions are up to date, and I regularly run antivirus and anti spyware programs so I don't think that's the problem.

What is going on here?

P.S. While I'm at it, can anyone tell me why my (eircom non wireless) broadband connection keeps inexplicably droppping?

The General

just press the 'any' key
it worked for homer simpson

deckie27

"Where is the Any Key"

tba

breadmonkey wrote:

I left my computer to go the kitchen. I came back no less than 1 minute later and it had spontaneously (sp?) rebooted itself.

While restarting, something like this came up:

>something< FAT32
The volume is dirty
Verifying files and folders

Then when it finished doing that, it said "window did not find and problems" or something to that effect. (I'm using Windows 2000 Professional).

My virus definitions are up to date, and I regularly run antivirus and anti spyware programs so I don't think that's the problem.

What is going on here?

P.S. While I'm at it, can anyone tell me why my (eircom non wireless) broadband connection keeps inexplicably droppping?

welcome to windows the home of unexpected errors.

prospect

How old is the machine,
Is it possible the hard drive failed?

deckie27

Ah forund it Here

Dec

deckie27

Joking aside

Was there a USB memory key plugged into the PC at the time?

Dec

Basq

Girlfriend got this error a week or two back.

Run ScanDisc on it... it can happen if the machine was not properly shut down and appropriate sectors weren't written correctly to the drive.

breadmonkey

Was there a USB memory key plugged into the PC at the time?

nope

How old is the machine,Is it possible the hard drive failed?

The computer is about 5 years old. It's a Dell Dimension 8100, pentium 4. What would happen if the hard drive "collapsed"?

jozi

I have had my pc reboot and run scan disk before getting into windows.
Turned out the harddisk was failing.

So if i where you i'd quicklly make a backup of everything you want to keep to a different drive/cd/dvd

Jozi

shane_mcc

something like that happened to me before
i went to the kitchen and we had a power cut, i was pretty pissed off cos i was working in photoshop and i hadn't saved anything. anyway, didn't bother checking the computer when the power was out, picked up a book instead, when the power came back, i went into my room, the computer was on with all programs running and files still on screen???
heres what i think. i have automatic restore points active, my computer is set up to switch on when it detects power and someother stuff active too.
so the computer made a restore point somewhere before the powercut while i was working, when the power came back the computer turned itself on, cos its set up to do that, and it jumped back to the last restore point. windows might be good for something afterall.
so you could have had a power surge which caused the computer to flinch and shut down or restart.
hope i was of any help

Infini

breadmonkey wrote:

P.S. While I'm at it, can anyone tell me why my (eircom non wireless) broadband connection keeps inexplicably droppping?

You should check the broadband forum for this but you should probably know that eircoms broadband has been pretty much fecked up since thir supposed upgrade in several places.

Fenster

Looks like power to your machine got interrupted. Windows will run chkdsk at boot up if it detects weirdness in any local volumes (hard drives, partitions, flash drives, etc).

breadmonkey

jozi wrote:

I have had my pc reboot and run scan disk before getting into windows.
Turned out the harddisk was failing.

So if i where you i'd quicklly make a backup of everything you want to keep to a different drive/cd/dvd

Jozi

That's scary. Is there even any way for me to back up my computer since my C and D drives combined have almost 80GB worth of stuff on them?

snappieT

Exactly.
Don't worry about it. It's just Windows checking to see if it can find a reason to stop working. It didn't. You're grand.

optiplexgx270

It was prob a power surge / failure and the pc just rebooted and as it was not shutdown propperly it did the scan etc.

prospect

Assuming you went to the kitchen to 'put kettle on' *in my best Man-Chest-A accent*

Is it possible that the power draw from that, could have knocked the pc out for a split second, if they are on the same socket circut?

eirman

breadmonkey wrote:

That's scary. Is there even any way for me to back up my computer since my C and D drives combined have almost 80GB worth of stuff on them?

Your best bet is to buy an external hard disk (160gig or 250gig) "caddy" and connect it using a spare USB port. It will probably appear as drive F:

If you have a spare hard disk lying around you can buy the caddy alone for about €50 from maplins or about €20 from komplett.ie

breadmonkey

OK it just happened again, WTF is going on?

deckie27

you need to check ur event logs and see if there any funnies. Looking for reds particulary ones relating to drive or memory errors

Dec

deckie27

Also were you doing stressfull work with the comp. ie playing games. coding video music

Dec

breadmonkey

No, the computer was idle at the time. How do I check the event log?

deckie27

right click on my computer
go to manage
event viewer
look at application and system
Reds are the errors which you need to be looking for

Dec