[baltclown]

Hi,

A few weeks ago I noticed my computer would randomly restart on it's own. I never saw a pattern in when it restarted so I couldn't figure out a cause. One time I was playing a game but plenty of times I would come home from work and find it had restarted when I wasn't touching it. I believe I have all my utilities set to run at night and I work during the day so I don't think that would've caused it. There's no blue screen or error message that I've noticed when it restarts.

Over the weekend however I turned it off for an extended period of time and now when I power it up, it starts to load Windows and restarts before it finishes. It does this whether I try to boot up in safe mode or normally.

I'm not super tech savvy but after doing some research it sounded like it could be a power supply problem so I tried installing a new power supply and that has not changed anything. It still continues to restart.

I haven't made any big software changes that I can think of. As for hardware, I did install some more RAM recently but it was after it had already started restarting on its own as I described in the first paragraph.

I'd appreciate it if someone could lend their thoughts on what to do next.

I'm running Windows XP.

Thanks!
Chris

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well go back to the old ram for starters.... second you could try unplugging all things except one stick of memory and the video and your boot drive and see if it will start.

[shard92]

well go back to the old ram for starters.... second you could try unplugging all things except one stick of memory and the video and your boot drive and see if it will start.

[Philip Kingsley]

Also check if ur Processor fan is running

[SRX660]

Since your computer is getting past the POST, it is probably not bad hardware. While it could be bad memory, the easist way to check is to boot the computer with one stick at a time, or check the ram in another compatible computer. If it is a heat problem it is probably that the CPU heatsink does not have a good enough contact with the processor to keep it cool. Replacing the heatsink compound is the fix for that. If the fan was not running i think the computer would just shut down very quickly.

I personally would do a repair install with a windows CD. This will take the drivers back to the original ones when windows was installed.

http://www.geekstogo...ws-XP-t138.html

If a repair install does not work i would then try a clean install of windows.

http://www.michaelst...nxpinstall.html

After all this if the computer still does a random shutdown, look into the event manager and see if there are any red or yellow marked messages. Double Click on them to find out what they are and look them up on the net to try finding fixes for them.

SRX660

[baltclown]

I didnt see these posts until this morning but yesterday I tried removing the last of the old RAM* to see if that made any difference and I was able to get it to load Windows. It ran fine all day and through the night but then this morning it restarted on it's own again. Luckily it still is booting Windows completely after it restarts so at least I can use the computer now.

I will try these suggestions when I get home from work tonight. Thanks for the help!

*For the record I had two sticks of 256MB RAM and one open slot. Then I got two 1GB sticks and installed those. Since I still had the open slot I left one of the 256MB sticks in there. So yesterday I removed the remaining 256MB stick and was able to boot the computer all the way.