RM Ascend 1010CFW Windows 7 restart error

[sadams1980]

Over the last couple of months I have been experiencing issues with our RM Ascend 1010CFWs. We have around 80 (180 PCs in total, made up of new....ish Stone and RM PCs - these are fine) of these within the school and after they have been on for a certain amount of time, they will restart. When we went over to Windows 7 I upped the RAM in these to 2GB.

My first thought was that they were over heating so I took them apart cleaned them out and replaced the CPU themal paste with Arctic Silver. This has not helped, I have also tried turning off hardware aceleration in Flash Player, I have updated what drivers I can (finding Windows 7 drivers for these PCs is........impossible), all I am down to now is re-imaging the PCs. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

I have check event viewer when a restart has taken place and it has proven as no help.

We are only a small school and these PCs are around 7 years old, but due to budget cuts we cannot afford to replace them at this time, so I am currently looking for ICT grants that I could apply for. Does anyone know of any grants available?

Cheers

[Michael]

I'd be inclined to think it's either going to be a motherboard or PSU issue causing random reboots like you describe. The fact nothing's logged in Event Viewer demonstrates it's not a software update causing the reboots.

I presume when you upgraded the memory that you matched the pairs together? So for example 2 old sticks together and 2 new sticks together, both totalling 2GB. Sometimes mixing/matching memory can create problems.

[sadams1980]

Hi Michael thanks for the reply, I have just had a restart in a room and checked the machine and i have had a dialogue box appear with this error message.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2057

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 50
BCP1: E7CC36E8
BCP2: 00000000
BCP3: 8200828A
BCP4: 00000002
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1

I have check this and it does seem to be caused by a RAM error, so I am currently running RAM diagnostics on the machine now.

[sadams1980]

Right have just ran 2 diagnostic test on the RAM using different software, but it cam up clean. Both sticks of RAM are new.

[Michael]

Does it only happen in machines with two new sticks?

[sadams1980]

Ummmm yeah it does seem to, these are very old machines.

[Michael]

I suppose it's possible to get some duff sticks. Did you buy branded or unbranded memory?

[sadams1980]

I gotta be honest I think they are unbranded. Ill have a play with some sticks in the dodgy machines and see if that helps. Thanks Michael.

[dhoward_westexetc]

I don't know whether this is related to the same issue but we have some Ascend 2020Bs of the same generation and began randomly freezing when we installed Windows 7 on them (ours are maxed out to 2GB).

I found out it was because of Intel SpeedStep kicking in on the old P4s that are in them.

I disabled SpeedStep and also C1E on the CPU feature in the BIOS and they are as solid as a rock now.

[sadams1980]

Hiya, thanks for the post at the moment I am willing to try anything. Can i ask how do you disable SpeedStep? Thanks

[dhoward_westexetc]

If it's the same BIOS then I think it's in Integrated Peripherals > CPU Feature. But my memory of these is so vague!

EDIT: Sorry, it's Advanced BIOS Features > CPU Feature. Disable C1E and SpeedStep.

[sadams1980]

They must be different BIOS's shame, thanks for you help though.

[dhoward_westexetc]

Typical! Nothing ever stays the same! Must be a different manufacturer of motherboard than the ASUS ones that are in the 2020Bs.

The only other thing is to use High Performance power setting which runs the CPU at 100% all the time. But it's not the same as actively disabling it in the BIOS.

[sadams1980]

Sods law. I should be able to do that via power management GPO shouldnt I?

[sadams1980]

Right I set one of the PCs to reimage, but when it was loading into the MDT imaging software it kept restarting so I wiped the hard drive and tried again. It is now re-imaging fine.

Could it be a hard drive issue? Once it has re-imaged i will try it and see.