[petes cadaver]

I wasn't quite positive where to post this so it's here in the Hardware thread. I was wondering why my computer randomly restarts say when I try to run a program like Counter-Strike or Anarchy-Online etc.. It doesn't do this all the time but it's starting to get more frequent lately and today even it restarted again after restarting the first time before it even got back to the startup screen for windows ( the blue one ).

Whats the deal?
Serious problem?
Fixable?





Thanksss.

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Hi,

Random restarts can be caused by a couple different things such as the psu, ram, heat.

How old is the computer? List your specs or the brand and model number.

Clean the inside with a can of compressed air especially the hsf and psu. But be carefull take your time and keep the can upright, if you turn it on its side it can release moisture.

It can be serious if it continuses but is fixable.

Rick

[Doby]

Hi,

Random restarts can be caused by a couple different things such as the psu, ram, heat.

How old is the computer? List your specs or the brand and model number.

Clean the inside with a can of compressed air especially the hsf and psu. But be carefull take your time and keep the can upright, if you turn it on its side it can release moisture.

It can be serious if it continuses but is fixable.

Rick

[petes cadaver]

its only a few years old.

Sony PCV-RX550
512 SDRAM
pentium4 1.5 GHz
Radeon 9600 XT card
160 GB harddrive(s)

[Doby]

Clean the inside first and see if that helps but also if you are monitoring the temps and voltages list them they could give us some clues.

If you need a program "mother board monitor" will list the temps.

If you are running XP then with no applications open, press ctrl,alt,delete once, this will open windows task manager click on the performance tab at the top.
What is the cpu usage at?
If more than 5% make sure you have all the MS updates, there is a update that resolves issues with your board and high cpu usage. Also scan for spyware and viruses.

Please do these steps first and if no inprovement we can check other things.

Rick

[Besttechie]

Hi,

If your running Windows XP try this:

Open Control Panel\System\Advanced tab\startup & recovery box\settings button, and take the check out of Automatically restart box. Then check the Write a system event, and the Admin alert boxes.
This will force a BSOD on the next crash (thats why it restarts...its crashing) that posts the Stop Error Code.

Post that here word-4-word including punctuation and letter case. We can research that.

B

[techgoddess_baby]

Have you tried going into safe mode to see if the computer randomly restarts? If you are using WIN XP go into safe mode by pressing F8 to go to the advanced options menu. Start your computer in safe mode. Then while you're at it go to control panel-power options. Check if your computer is hibernating. If there is a check in enable hibernation - remove it. Let us know if this works ok? You have a lot of things to eliminate here....we're not even sure yet if this is a hardware or software problem.