Occasionally the computer restarts without notice.
 
I figger it is prolly the sound card drivers, or the vid drivers. (no dump files)
 
But it occurred to me, given I use a bunch of 32 bit vst thangs, it may be one of these, and/or bitbridge.
 
So, what effects does a bitbridge malfunction exhibit??
 
And:  on the verge of purchasing jbridge.
 
Is bitbridge improved in x2 enough that jbridge is not needed? 

that sounds like you may need to have an overclocking nerd go into your bios and bump the voltage up a bit for your cpu. are you overclocking? what are the pc specs?

even if you're not overclocking, many stock PCs and default bios settings tend to under-volt the cpu so as to keep it safe from overheating -- the trade off is system stability when the pc is under a stress test situation (like with a DAW).

if you pursue this path be sure to have your tech monitor the temps. you may need better cooling to retain stablity with the loads you may be putting it under.

but, it sounds like it's definately hardware and not software or a "crash." that said, an application putting the cpu under stress is likely the instigator.

it does not sound like drivers (but make sure they're up-to-date).

actually, one other possibility for just shutting off and restarting is an underpowered or failing power supply. you might try that first. get a good one way over-speced (like 1200 watts) and just be done with it. then you can 100% rule out the power supply and start looking elsewhere. you'll be able to keep that power supply for a new build, so it won't be a lost investment. 


get like a Corsair AX1200 pro series at newegg or something.

Go into Control Panel - System and tell it not to automatically restart on a failure. That way you'll get a white screen possibly with an error message on it. Otherwise you can go the the Administrative Tools and look at the Event Log. Its not often that you get anything useful, but occasionally you might. 

Thanks for the ideas.

The restarts are happening a bunch when w8 is booted.

Not so much with w7-32, and 64.
I have increased the cpu voltage.

w8::  prime95 will run for hours and then opening SX1 will restart the computer.
         I can then open sonar and work for hours.
         And then when closing sonar, restart.

All this is very weird.

Thanks for the reminder about not auto-restarting.

More to test and use short words about.

yikes! you did that yourself? that's heady, touchy stuff. so, be careful and do it small increments. a little goes a long way. i hope you at least did some googling. :-)

i was lucky, i was in warranty on my mainboard for a free "overclock engineer" support call over at asus and got one of the top pros there. i picked his brain for an hour while we optimized my bios. i was calling to solve stability issues with my pc resetting, like yours.

in addition to boosting the main voltage, another trick he shared was to disable all the intel speedstep, turbo boost and CE1 options. i had all of them enabled and my machine was resetting like crazy when i would put a load on it. after disabling, it solved it. you actually get better performance at a lower clock but full, all-core, continuous clocking than you do with turbo boost constantly turning on and off and bringing the cores up and down on the fly. while it sounds good in theory, in practice, DAWs like full-on, continuous CPU bandwidth.

with turbo, i got my i7 3770K up to around 4700! but with machine resets. i've got high-end liquid cooling with a quad, push-pull fan configuration on it, or i would not even have attempted any of this. so be careful. get some cooling.

when i turned off turbo, speedstep and CE1 i was able to get similar performance with my DAW at about 4200 overclock and no machine resets. well, it resets about once a week. i can live with that given the screaming performance i'm getting.

another thing you can use to test for voltage issues, but BE CAREFUL WITH THIS, is by using the "intel burn test" (google it). if you run it and your pc doesn't reset, it's probably not voltage-stability related. if you run it and your system resets, it's probably a stability issue related to voltage too low and/or clock too high. the guy at ASUS told me that the newer Z77 boards make it pretty hard to create a situation where you can burn your CPU out (but it's still possible). but, older mainboards make it easier to destroy your CPU with something like the intel burn test. so be careful.

haha, i feel like i'm giving you really dangerous advice here, but it really does seem like it's a voltage issue to me. i just went through the exact same sounding thing. and it was indeed voltage related. but your situation may be different.

again, i'm using the Corsair H100 liquid cooler with quad fans, tons of fans in the case and an open rack case. but even with all that i pressed the button in that intel burn test with great reservation. but, i got confirmation as it instantly reset my computer. haha. so... it does work as an investigation tool if you have your bases covered and good cooling in place.

I wouldn't touch ANY of that stuff unless I knew EXACTLY what I was doing and what the possible problems are!

You could fry your cpu/motherboard in an instant.

BSOD's are usually related to bad drivers but can be a symptom of some other underlying problem, like overheating, bad RAM chips etc.

i agree. i did this with ASUS on the phone. and researched it like crazy. and i have 20 years experience building pcs. :-)

well, he's not getting a BSOD tho. it's a hard reset. that's usually PSU or voltage / clocking issues.


(oh, just to document my case, for the archives. the other thing i did to increase stability was to check the voltage going to the ram. it was lower than what this ram wanted and was spec'd for. so i bumped it up and that sealed the deal for my current stability / performance trade-off status -- i.e., i can run the intel burn test on the highest setting without the computer shutting off and restarting which is much more brutal a test than anything Sonar would do.)

good luck, man!

Take a look at your Event logs, both for System and Application, specifically for errors at the times your system is rebooting itself:
 
Start-Right-click on Computer-Manage-Event Viewer-Windows logs.

Been way stupid busy.

Thank you for your concern about me changing stuff.  Been playing with/building computers since '84.

Set the comp to not restart. Exited Sonar and the desktop is completely not responsive.

Nothing in the event logs except the usual "did not shut down correctly" items.

And No crash dumps.

Since the computer just hangs, under no load, I do not suspect the power supply. But I may swap to be sure.

I have checked the voltage for cpu and ram. Did change the ram when installed to comply with manufacturers specs. I did increase cpu voltage 1 tick.

I have tried Prime95, and OCCT, and something else.  They run for hours without complaint. And the CPU temp does not go over 40.

The crashes are mostly only happening when opening/closing sonar. Was able to edit a many track/effect projects for 2 hours, save-as repeatedly. And then exiting Sonar nuked the computer.

Have changed the timer used by windows to test latency issues.

The crashes happen less for w7-32, with same projects.

Did crash X2 today while learning about the copy/move limitations of track lanes.

The odyssey continues.

The OP:::::   what does a bitbridge crash look like??  Anybody? Beuhler? Beuhler? Beuhler?