Hi M. Richard May,


In my experience there are 2 possibilities.

1) Dodgy Memory
2) CPU over temperature shutdown

Running the WCG agent is the best burn in your PC could get and it will show up any limitations within your system.

No1 is a nightmare to diagnose. I had a PC that would blue screen and shut down anywhere between booting up and 3 or 4 hours of on time. Completely random. I changed everything until the only possibility was the memory stick.

Before I discovered this it blue screened during a defrag and trashed my Win95 completely back in the days when you had to feed the PC with a bucket load of floppy disks before it would know it was going to be a useful computer. Quick nip down to the PC shop new then 64M Dimm and that PC was a dream to work with from that moment on. I now only buy Corsair Memory that is full tested before they will put their name to it. It's not worth the pain of loosing your data for the money you save on generic memory. I learnt that the hard way

No2 is just your CPU protecting itself from overheating. When this happens on my PC I get out the Hoover (Dyson) and suck all the fluff and dust out of my CPU fan. Then it's good to go for another 6 months. The other posibility is that your CPU's heatsink is not fitted correctly. It may not be seated flush with the shiny surface of your CPU chip or you may have insufficient heat transfering gloob for want of a better term. You read all about the stuff with silver particles in there but I've found this stuff to be overrated and the standard white paste is the best. As long as your heatsink is not full of dust and is fitted correctly this will cure your shutdown problem.

With experience of crunching for Seti, Folding@Home and 5 years of run time over at Grid.org. These 2 things are the most likely to scupper your Number Crunching fun.

Hope this helps

Regards

Dave

Dell, to the best of my knowledge does not have a CPU temp measurement and I have been unable to get one to work on Dell desktops. I have tried several including motherboardmonitor ....but that was some time back. I cannot tell from the posts but looking at your software, nothing seems amiss so I would bet, like the others that it is 1) CPU temp...either vacuum it out or blow it out with the canned air that you can find at office supply stores or even WallMart. It you are using the blow it out method, take it outside in a well ventilated area before you start.

I just checked the Dell site for diagnostics. Like many other websites, they tell how to start their diagnostic software but do not list what is tested. But I did come across this user post dated 6 Feb 2005:Hope this is helpful,
mycrofth

Thanks again to everyone. It looks as if over temp is the culprit. I don't seem to fall into the norm (no surprise for me!) since my system is over a year old and have not seen this problem until now.

I pulled out the old shop vac and sucked the chips right out of my laptop and have not had a crash all day. Got my fingers crossed (hard to use my mouse this way).

I did uninstall Rosetta since it seemed that it was causing the problem. If all runs well I will reinstall it and "let the good times roll".

BTW... Dell diags show no problems with any of the tests... I grabbed one of the suggested utilities that measures temps and it looks like my system runs a little hot even after (hopefully) removing the dust.

I will follow up only if I have additional problems.

Dick --
Hope the cleaning works -- we are all pulling for you.