Hello, have been having problems with my 1.2 GHz Athlon, (40G drive, 256MB ram OS: XP Pro) for a little while now. Have had to reformat many times due corrupt files ect. Lately, the computer just turns off and reboots all by itself.. no warnings, no anything. Could it be a hardware problem?

The power supply has been suggested to me, it looks to be about 250W. Am running two hard drives (a 40 and a 60), a burner and CDrom.

Any other suggestions? :unsure:

Does it shutdown and restart, or does it just restart?

I put my bet on the power supply, can you borrow a more powerfull one and try for a couple of days?

Cactus: it shuts down like someone shut off the power and then it reboots itself.

Areia: Locally I can buy a 300W power supply for about $30 so could probably just try installing a new one. However, have not done this before but have installed HD, CD R/W etc., so the questions is: Is it difficult to replace the power supply?

As you are just replacing one - try here
_http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/hardware/m40e/m40e-hwguide/html/power-maintain4.html

I am sure you can do it.

It's not very likely that it is a hadware problem: If the box does a normal shutdown it's probably shutware related, or the poweroff buttun is faulty and make contact itself.

It won't be a thermal problem either; the box would then shutdown but not restart.

Set your CMOS so that hitting the poweroff button will only shutdown your box if it's pressed for 4 seconds (be aware, this means a powercut, no normal shutdown) and see if the problem still exists. If so, I'm pretty sure it's software related.

The PSU can't be at fault (at least not likely) since it can't give Winodws a shutdown command.

Edit: Typos!!!

Quote:

It's now very likely

should of course be

Quote:

It's not very likely

Mine is starting by itself :o

I turn the power off when I go to sleep and the PC start by itself a couple of hours later :blink:

I think this is an option in the bios ?

Could be Bads, is it turning on every night at the same time? Then it is.

Two possible things (I can think of) could be wrong:

In you BIOS could be it could be set that your box shut powerup at a given time, or, you box could be setup to auto-powerup after a powerout.

Both options are often found in the Boot or Power option part of your BIOS.

@AnneJay
Ok I'll bite...
Depending on ur level of puter savy i'm betting on this cause it's the easiest & most overlooked.
XP has an option to "restart" the computer when it thinks it's going to be damaging itself. So we want to stop that feature for now to see if that's the problem. Go to a clear spot on ur desktop, rightclick on "My Computer, hit the "Advanced" tab under the sub catagory "Startup and Recovery" then hit "settings"...
from there under "System failure" uncheck (if it's checked) "Automatically restart"... Hope it helps!

I will check this Cactus ;)

The next time I reboot my PC and let you know after :lol:

@lickablepig

Tried your suggestion, and unfortunately this morning I ended up with the "black screen of death", meaning there was nothing - no error, nothing. The power was on but that was it, so it managed to shut itself off again. Does this sound bad? :(

um, sounds like a housecall...

do u run the restroe feature?

are u getting stop errors or exceptions?

Was it ever running stable after install?

k, teh more nfo u have easier it is for sum1 to help, /diagnose..

ie: what are u doing jus b4 it restarts?

Is it going into standby mode...? clear spot desktop, rightclick properties, screensaver "energy saving features of monitor" settings " 'power schemes' is there sumting in there you can change so it will not go in standby? (if infact that was the issue), dunno, jus taking a wild shot at it...

if u were running with restore on u could try "last known good"

Hmm- I wonder if protecteur makes housecalls near Lansdowne. :P

i'm going to say the PSU too, modern athlon and intel motherboards / cpu's need at least 250 to 300 watts to run properly, and then you have to be able to power your drives, your pci cards, your agp video card (if yours is agp), etc.... if you only have a 250 watt psu, you're really stretching for power, the motherboard and cpu are using most of it and not leaving enough at all for the rest of the system...

@cactus
thanks for your suggestion on the bios, will look into it.

@ lickablepig
thanks for your suggestions, but it wasn't on standby, but like the idea of a housecall.. that would probably help alot. Have tried the last known config, it doesn't work, have tried a system restore, didn't work either. Am going to try reinstalling the OS.

@Sephiroth
Thank you for the information on the power supply. Am considering installing a 300 Watt PS; hey, how hard can it be?

Anne :)

I had a gateway that used to reboot at random all by it self and even gateway couldnt find out why.

I had a simular problem,machine would just reboot without any warning even when doing nothing,sometimes repeaterly.,totaly randomly.I tried the motherboard in another system increased the CPU cooling,etc it made no difference.I assumed there there was some sort of intermittant fault on the motherboard. I have now bought a second hand replacement and this is working fine no matter what I throw at it.

My PC is also shutting itself off on its own. I'll walk away for 30 or so min and come back to find it completely off. Attempting to turn it back on does NO good until I pull the power cord and wait 10 seca and put it back in, and THAN it turns on. What do you think is most likely the cause of this and how can I resolve it?? Would re-install the OS do any good? Am running an Hp Pavilion with 500Mhz, 256MB of ram, 10GB HD, and Windows XP Home Edition. Plz reply asap.! Thanks

TCM

I add this prob too last year ( with XP SP1 )

By doing some hardware test first .... i found that was a stick of 256DDR memory that was making me reboot automaticly each 20, 30 or 40 mins !!

So remove it .. and then no prob ....

I have test this memory on other PC .. and faq ...... this stick of memory werk fine !!

Anyway !!

Just recovering from this same thing. After a new Power Supply, 2 bad sticks of memory and loosing all data on 4 HD's I wish you luck getting it figured out. If you are getting different error codes with every BSOD I would guess the memory. That's how mine started. Thought PS at first, replaced it and didn't correct a thing. Pulled all memory out and put in 1 at a time. 1 stick gave error beeps, another stick booted fine until it went into windows, started, BSOD, with a different error code, (would be flopy, disk, memory, page fault, ect..) Think I saw every message trying to figure it out. Doesn't help had to do this with 2 processors. (run a dual, had to check processors too). Cheapest thing to strart with is the PS, but if still have the problem, next would be to check the memory.

Good Luck
HotRod

Hi HotRod:

Thanks for the hint, your problem sounds very similar to mine. Here's the latest BSOD :angry: .

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

STOP: 0X00000000a (0X00000000, 0X00000002, 0X00000001, 0X00000001, 0X804E768B)

Look similar to any of yours?

Anne

Have that one written down in a list of errors I got. Write down a few more and see if all different.
If there is anyway you can check memory in another machine or borrow a stick that is where I would start. XP is funny about memory, while the stick may run well on another OS it won't run on XP. Talking with a friend after getting this back running, he had to swap memory with another machine to get XP to run on his.

A list of "stop" messages is at \http://aumha.org/kbestop.htm

The top one, 0A, is yours. There may be useful info there.

BSOD Huh?

You didn't tell us that :)

Went and ordered an upgraded PSU from HP for my particular problem, and now all seems to be working fine..........................except for the internal CD-Rom drive which now doesn't work. Heck, it won't even open up when I push the button and its not available in Windows Explorer or anything. My dad helped me install the new PSU and I am sure all wires were reconnected properly because if they weren't, the PC wouldn't even power on. Good thing I still have my external CDR/RW drive which is in good working order.

Any ideas about the internal CD-rom though??

Thanks,
TCM

@ Cross Movement:

Could it be a slave/master conflict and / or are you sure you hooked up the power supply to the CD Rom... when dealing with all of those wires it's easy to forget one.

I was the one who started this thread but my problem seems to be the RAM.. just replaced a bad stick the other day and so far it's behaved itself.

I don't think so, because any misconfiguration would cause the computer to not turn on at all. since my external cd-rom is working alright, I'm not in any real hurry to fix it, but eventually I may need to get another internal cd-rom

My next question is: if I ever needed to re-install Windows for any reason would my external CDR/RW be able to do the job?

@ Cross Movement

Yup, that's what R/W means - Reader / Writer

Yeah but suppose I format my HD and re-install a fresh copy. Would my CDRW still be able to do it? it IS external using the USB port. Thats where I am having my doubts.

TCM....if its plug and play....then no worries at all....but if it is "plug and pray" then @#$#@....HEHEHE

Its a yamaha CDRW 24 speed external plugged into a USB 2.0 port? would it be fine?

tcm: if it won't even open, it's not even getting power ;) check the cable, and if all else fails, try plugging a different cable into it

Random BSOD system errors and corrupted files sounds like bad memory.

Spontaneous reboots could well be an overheated processor. Assuming the cpu isn't overclocked, first thing would be to open the case and make sure the cpu fan is still operating.

Go to BIOS and set the option for the 1st bootable device as USB device!!

I saw a similar restarting without reason problem with a computer at work. After reinstalling OS and replacing power supply to no avail, I once noticed an audible "click", coming from the nearby metal framed windows and blinds, right as the comp shut down...STATIC ELECTRICITY! It hit me like a ton of bricks that this might be the cause and after moving the comp a few feet from the windows, the problem dissappeared. I had never before heard the noise but I am certain that it need not be a powerful enough release to be heard from 20 feet away (where I was sitting at the time) to affect the delicate balance of a computer. I am also surprised that more damage wasn't done. Never underestimate outside forces!

---------------------

Sigma Zeta 314

Yup, redkitty. that' exactly what it was... had both sticks tested and one of them was bad. Purchased new stick and have had no problems since.

Thanks for you all your help, Betaone-ions!

Anne :D