[MatCon5]

My girlfriends parents bought a used computer from a local computer shop(they also do repairs etc).
A day or so after they bought it, it started randomly restarting. It's an older system by about a few years.
It runs WinXP. Not sure of the entire specs of the machine off hand.

Apparently another person bought a computer at the same shop and had the same problem. They took it to a repair shop out of town to a more urban area. And there they found something was installed or altered on the system to make it randomly restart.
In turn giving them more business or something of that sort.

I was wondering what sort of things could be done to make this happen, the computer is still acting this way and I have not taken it upon myself to reformat it yet. I'm sure there are legal matters being broken by doing this sort of thing and I would like to see people be reimbursed.

Any ideas of what I could look for within the system to see if this is indeed going on.

Thank you all in advance.

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This is the risk you take with second hand computers. The used computer may have a hardware fault.
You can try reformatting it and see if it fixes the problem but then you'll lose any "proof" you may have of this tactic, if such a thing happens.

Bear in mind computers randomly restart for hundreds of reasons - hardware issues, software conflicts, even for no apparent reason. I have seen blue screens occur that occur for no specific reason, nothing wrong with hardware, software, installation, in fact even no record on the system that it fell over in the first place even though I saw it do so.

Easiest thing to do if you're not happy is take it back where you bought it from and get a refund. Then put the money towards a new one.

[Neil Jones]

This is the risk you take with second hand computers. The used computer may have a hardware fault.
You can try reformatting it and see if it fixes the problem but then you'll lose any "proof" you may have of this tactic, if such a thing happens.

Bear in mind computers randomly restart for hundreds of reasons - hardware issues, software conflicts, even for no apparent reason. I have seen blue screens occur that occur for no specific reason, nothing wrong with hardware, software, installation, in fact even no record on the system that it fell over in the first place even though I saw it do so.

Easiest thing to do if you're not happy is take it back where you bought it from and get a refund. Then put the money towards a new one.