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Restart Problem


Exp44

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Any time software on my dad's HP Workstation tries to restart his machine, it shuts down fine, but when it gets to the HP splash screen, the white loading bar gets a half inch from the end, and the whole thing just freezes. The only way we have been able to fix it is to unplug the computer, the router, the modem (which kills my internet) and leave it unplugged for at least an hour. Then we plug everything back in, and hope it works. Obviously I want to fix the problem because I don't want my dad shutting off the internet every time this happens. Manual, user initiated restarts work fine, it's just when software tries to do it that it screws up. I have already disabled Windows Updates so it only downloads them, but does not install them (which would cause restarts) but his computer is plugged into a backup battery, and it's software tries to restart his computer whenever there's a power failure (which does happen sometimes in the night) and I haven't tried to disable that yet. My question to you is, am I correct in that only software is causing this problem, why is there a problem, and when it happens does unplugging the internet really help to fix it (we're only doing it now because it's the only way to get it to work)? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

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Well we would do that if we could. You see, we wake up to find his computer stuck at that point, so something must be restarting it in the night. If it's not the internet that's fixing it, why does it always work when we unplug the internet?

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My WiFi card in my main desktop was the culprit in a case just like this. Try finding newer drivers for anything you can, and see if the problem goes away.

If not, start disabling/uninstalling hardware one by one until it does. Like disable a network card, and leave the computer overnight, if it doesn't happen......theres a good chance it's at fault. Test again to be sure.

 

Not all hardware problems present themselves as crashes, some just lockup the computer, which sucks cause it's hard to diagnose. Usually those, are expansion hardware like PCI cards of any kind.

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Thanks for the additional advice. My dad's computer does not have a wifi card installed, but I could try disabling the network card overnight (but I won't do it until Tuesday night since he says that's when it usually happens for some reason). He has two external usb hard drives, but they're always turned off at night and not connected to the computer. He also has a small USB license key plugged in, but that's only so professional software on his computer will run. So I just told him about disabling the network card during the night, he said he'd try that a few other things to see if we can fix it.

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Ok, he is out of town for the next week, so I will unplug all USB devices tonight, and see if we still get the problem.

 

Edit: Wow lol I didn't realize I was now a Premium Member. Yay! Lol anyway ever since disabling automatic updates, his computer hasn't restarted since. So unless the problem happens again, I'm going to assume it was the updates.

Edited by Exp44
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  • 3 weeks later...

I know this thread needs to die now, but I'd like to say I found the complete solution for anyone else who might be wondering. So, the problem did happen again, but my mom had tried to restart the computer. What's funny is she shut off the power by pushing the main power toggle switch, so everything in the room (which contains a lot of electronics) was running on battery. Turned on the pc, power went dead. Figured out it was because of overload, turned pc back on. I did not have the network card turned off, but when when the computer was starting up I unplugged the ethernet cord from his computer, so it didn't have internet. That fixed it right away, the computer started up just fine. After it had fully loaded, plugged in internet, and I was good to go.

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