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PC turning itself off
mookaloid - 26/1/13 at 08:53 PM

Why would a PC keep rebooting itself?

reasons I can think of:

PSU on its way out - most likely IMHO

CPU fan not properly seated causing overheating?

Memory fault?

anything else I've missed??

Cheers

Mark


David Jenkins - 26/1/13 at 09:01 PM

CPU heatsink full of dust, or the air vents on the PC case are full of dust, or the CPU fan has failed. Possibly the air inlet to the power supply is clogged with dust.

(speaking as someone who's just noticed that it's about time that he took a vacuum cleaner to his PC, which sits on the floor and hoovers up loads of dust!)


gremlin1234 - 26/1/13 at 09:02 PM

quote:

anything else I've missed??


dust build up on heatsinks/fans causing overheating


MakeEverything - 26/1/13 at 09:08 PM

Or a virus. There was one out a while back that caused an endless restart cycle.


matty h - 26/1/13 at 09:23 PM

I have a similar problem with my laptop.It rebots a couple of times when you irst boot it up but once it has done this a couple of times it works perfectly.
Anyone have any ideas I currently have the secondary ram card out as I was told this was the cause.
Thanks and sorry for the thread hijack Matty


Slimy38 - 26/1/13 at 10:34 PM

Pretty much any removable part on a PC can become 'temperamental' where it connects to the motherboard. My last 'rebooting' PC was a memory stick that needed it's contacts cleaned up (matty, this sounds like what you have?).

First thing I'd do is take everything apart, clean it up and put it together again. The action of unplugging everything is usually enough to clean the connections enough. And while you're there you can check the CPU heatsink and replace the copper paste.


Ninehigh - 26/1/13 at 10:36 PM

If it's overheating it would switch off, not reboot


chrism - 27/1/13 at 12:26 PM

If its an automatic restart cause by software aka a blue screen they you can turn off the auto restart if its Windows.

In XP and 7 right click on the computer icon on start menu and select properties.

If windows 7 click on advanded system settings on left (Not required on XP)

Then click on the Advanced tab, under startup and recovery click on settings

Under system failure there will be an option for automatic restart, make sure the tick is removed.

If it now blue screens it wont restart itself it will just show the blue screen with the error.

If its hardware then do as others have said, clean out dust from heatsinks, remove and reseat all removeable stuff such as memory, graphics cards, etc.


raplma - 27/1/13 at 02:31 PM

If it's none of the above, then another more random/extreme possibility that I have come across a few times and could be a candidate if it is an older PC are failing capacitors on the Motherboard, you can tell by the tops being domed. This was a common fault on a series of Dells for a while.