website causes hard shutdown

[Shep]

I was letting my son play some games on www.playhousedisney.com and about 10 minutes into it, my computer just shuts down. I thought for sure it was something he did, so we tested it again with the same results. This was on my new slackware 10.2 install, so I booted into Debian Sarge to test it there. It did the same thing in both Distros, so I don't think its anything at the OS level. I don't remember this happening with my old mobo either. Its a pretty old box, but here is its specs.

AMD 2200+ processor
512 MB RAM
160 GB HD *new
Gigabyte mobo *new
nVidia GeForce vid card
forget the name of the sound car, but it doesn't really matter I guess.
Slackware 10.2 2.6.13 kernel, Debian Sarge 2.6.8 kernel

Anyways, The motherboard and hard drive are fairly new (under two months). When the box shuts down, the mobo beeps. I couldn't find anything in /var/log that would indicate a hardware failure, but then again I don't know what to look for. Is there anything in particular I should grep for? I also booted into the bios to see if there was anything scewy, but all looked ok. Any troubleshooting tips would be great. The box has been quite stable besides this one site that tends to crash it.

[Sepero]

You skipped one very important thing: Which web browser?
(I assume you use the same browser on both systems...)

Also, it would be nice if you could tell us exactly how you did it. I would like to try it out on my Debian system.

[Sepero]

Sorry. Upon reading over your post again, I think you are a little confused.

Information gets to your computer like this:
Internet->Browser->[optional plugin]->Hardware

Not like this:
Internet->Hardware

This would explain why you did not list anything about your software.

If there is a bug, it is most likely in your Browser or one of it's plugins.

[Shep]

I didn't list browser or plugins because because I ruled that out. My son has played games on this site before. The only difference is new mobo and hard drive. Anyways I tested it in both distros using Firefox 1.0.6(slack) and 1.0.7(sarge). The site requires the macromedia flash plugin. I will test with Opera browser when I get home just to check. I also tried it will different games on the site, and they all seemed to have the same result.

[Shep]

I also monitored GKrellm while he was playing it, and it was pretty processor intensive, but nothing too extreme. I wasn't able to monitor the proc temp though.

[Sepero]

Ok, I see the site now. It's appears to be all Macromedia Flash. I assume you do know that is a Proprietary(closed-source) plugin. Odds are 9 out of 10 that the plugin is causing the crash.

The good news is I think you can setup flash to run in a sandbox. I think it's called putting it in a "wrapper". I got my version of flash from www.apt-get.org, and on that version it asks you about this option when you first install it.

I'd still like to know exactly how your son got it to crash. I really wanna try it out for myself.

[knute]

There is another piece of important information
that was left out.

You said that your motherboard beeps.

What is the sequence and pattern of long and
short beeps when this happens?

The reason that I ask, is that since the site
is so processor intensive, could your processor
be overheating and your mobo shutting down the
system to prevent hardware damage?

The beeps will tell you. There should be a
section in your mobo manual about beep codes
that would help in dxing the exact problem.

HTH

[Sepero]

I didn't list browser or plugins because because I ruled that out. My son has played games on this site before. The only difference is new mobo and hard drive.

I can see how you would think this, but it is inaccurate. (This coming from a person who is knowledgable in C++, Python, HTML and Java.) Software is THE LINK between information and hardware. If hardware acts badly to information, it is the fault of the link(software).

Case in point: A program can work perfectly fine with hardware X, but crash miserably with hardware Y.

In theory, the program should work perfectly with both sets of hardware. When it doesn't, this is called a bug.

EDIT:
I'm not saying 100% that it isn't a hardware problem (even though I may think that ). But if it is a hardware problem, then the same thing should happen with other programs and software too. Not just on a specific website with a specific plugin.

[Shep]

Great, thanks for the help guys. I will reinstall the flash plugin through apt-get and see if there is a wrapper option. I think I just installed it origionally through firefox, but it was a long time ago(debian). In Slack, I deffinately installed flash through firefox. Then if I have the same problem, I'll count the beeps from the mobo, and look it up in the manual. I'll update later.

[timothykaine]

Be sure to also check the temperature in your BIOS right after it spontaniously reboots.

[Sepero]

Is there an update to this?

[je_fro]

I think his CPU was overheating....

[soulestream]

I gotta agree with Jefro. If the game is hitting his cpu hard and he has a new motherboard, then his heatsink is probably not sitting right, bad fan setup, or did you any kind (or too much) thermal paste. All of these thing could cause overheating and pulling the cpu hard would cause it to overheat.

[Shep]

I gotta agree with Jefro. If the game is hitting his cpu hard and he has a new motherboard, then his heatsink is probably not sitting right, bad fan setup, or did you any kind (or too much) thermal paste. All of these thing could cause overheating and pulling the cpu hard would cause it to overheat.

Sorry for the late update. The problem got worse and would crash if I did anything. Soulestream nailed it. It was an overheating problem because of the heatsink not seated right (last time I let a friend help me install a mobo) and it took a while before it got bad. So I picked up some thermo grease and reseated it. No more overheat problems. Thanks guys.