Need to trigger a cold reboot without shutting down Windows - how?

[Volatus]

I have an interesting problem I'd like to be able to solve before my friend - whose apartment the "server" sits in - gets home and could fix it himself.

I remote-control a server that streams TiVo to me via a cheap TV tuner card, a network card in the TiVo to control it, and a DD-WRT router that can Wake-On-LAN the server (after much arm-wrestling with getting XP to stop disabling the BIOS WOL function when it mis-detects that the network card isn't WOL-capable - fixed by adding a newer WOL-capable card but not using it).

Problem is, the tuner doesn't play nice with Hibernate. I last put the PC in Hibernate mode, then woke-on-LAN it. I tried to start "Broadcasting" from Windows Media Encoder, and it locked up. The last time this happened, I was left with a locked, but still partially responsive, system that needed to be "remotely" rebooted with the press of the reset button (I hate doing that). The driver locked up and wouldn't time out, so the system was forever waiting on a hung driver in order to use that device again (or shut down the program that hung waiting for it). I'm now encountering that same problem again. WME is locked up, and if I go to "shut down" Windows, I will be left with a completely frozen server I can't do anything with until my friend gets home and resets it for me. I want to watch TV!

So, what I need is a program that is capable of crashing Windows - yeah. But crash it in such a way as it actually triggers the BIOS to hard-reset the computer *without* informing Windows. The functional equivalent of a software reset button. Does anyone know of such a beast? Something compatible with an old dual-P3 server from 1998-ish?

I can still run a program because the only part of the system that's frozen is anything that tries accessing either the sounds card or the TV tuner (I think). I can still download a program via Remote Desktop's drive access, then run it. I just need to know where I can find that program...

I figured this was the place to ask :-)

Edited February 5, 2008 by Volatus

[cluberti]

Try NotMyFault from sysinternals. Just download, extract, go into your architecture folder (x86 or x64) and click the notmyfault.exe binary. The default is High IRQL fault (kernel), which is great - just click "Do Bug" to bugcheck the box. Just make sure the "Automatically reboot" option is selected in advanced options .

[Volatus]

Sweet, I'll give that a try! I double-checked before posting this that the "auto-reboot" option was enabled, but I didn't know there was a way (beyond the scroll-lock reg-tweak... that requires a reboot!) to trigger a BSOD. Hell, I never thought I actually wanted a BSOD

This has to be in the candidates for "strangest Windows requests ever"

Thanks!!

edit: It worked! The "Do bug" button stayed pressed down (meaning it worked immediately) and about 3 minutes later I was able to reconnect to Remote Desktop and start the stream back up. Thanks!! No more Hibernate for me

Edited February 5, 2008 by Volatus