Hello,

Since there have been a number of queries about computers rebooting
suddenly and without apparent cause I thought I would share these
observations with you all.

Repetitive spontaneous reboots occurred in three different situations,
different machines, different users, different buildings. All of the
occurences could be traced to the same phenomenon, static-electric
discharge at the keyboard.

The users became statically charged by moving around on a vinyl covered
chair while wearing a woolen sweater and then touching the keyboard, a
woolen lap robe was dragged across a vinyl covered chair and brought in
the vicinity of the keyboard, and finally, the user sitting in an office
chair with plastic rollers moved about on a woolen carpet and touched the
keyboard. All of these incidents can be reproduced on dry, but not on
rainy days. The problem is resolved if the person wears a grounding
(earthing) bracelet or if a non-plastic covered chair is used and/or
non-woolen garment is worn. A Key Tronic keyboard with "static-discharge
space bar" did not help (presumably one would have to intentionally or
accidentally touch the space bar first).

A colleague told me that he had seen similar phenomena more than 15 years
ago using an "ancient" Tandon pre-pc.

Somewhat ironically, rebooting only occurs when running Windows 95, not
Warp or Linux running on one-and-the same machine (only tested on one of
the machines, so inconclusive). In addition to spontaneous rebooting,
static discharge at the keyboard can cause computers to become instable
and finally crash.

I hope this information is of use and wish everyone good troubleshooting!

Respectfully,

Bruce

--
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        Bruce Boschek - Institute of Medical Virology
        Justus-Liebig-University - Giessen, Germany
                       CompuServe 100331,2566
            Brought to you through IBM OS/2 Warp 4
                       and MR/2 ICE (Reg. #19501)
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