Tech Forum

One of my single ward units has a problem with MLS suddenly disappearing or causing a self reboot during a donation batch. It started with just a few random times but now it is happening multible times during one batch causing the clerks to restart the computer at each episode. They do not lose the batch data but it causes problems with printing checks. Other times the MLS startup page blinks on and then is suddenly gone repeatly when accessed. I had to perform a hard reboot to clear that problem. I have performed defrags, system checks and MLS reinstall. We have upgraded the RAM to 1g. The problem is getting worse. Is there a registry problem or corrupt file that can be fixed or should I just wait for the replacement computer to arrive?

I would say it might be a RAM issue. Unless this all of a sudden started. Take out the RAM you put in the Box, and see if the problem goes away. How soon before you will receive your new computer? If it is less than a month away, then you might be fine to wait, but if it is longer than that you had better think about maybe backing up your computer and getting prepared for a total system restore. No fun, but it is no fun to have problems with MLS when trying to do Tithing or writing checks.

I can think of a few possible causes of your problem. First, it could very well be a RAM issue, as NateDavis pointed out. To diagnose this, I highly recommend downloading the MemTest86 ISO file and burning it to a CD. Boot directly from this CD and let it run for a few hours and see if any errors show up. This could also be used to partially diagnose other issues as noted below.

The MemTest86 program is written so it should NEVER reboot if it encounters a memory error. It handles them gracefully and keeps on testing. If your system DOES reboot during the test, you most likely have something more serious. The most obvious are either one or more bad capacitors on the motherboard, as documented elsewhere in this forum and on numerous sites around the 'net, a faulty power supply, an overheating issue due to a CPU or power supply fan not running or plugged with dust, or some other hardware issue. I would look at these things first, before suspecting software or registry issues.

Having the system suddenly reset can have devastating results on the MLS database, so I would seriously look at solving this ASAP.