My computer running XP, 1.8 cpu, 512m of ram has just started shutting down and restarting itself randomly. Any obvious places to look first? Software or hardware? Any ideas would be very helpful. TIA.

Have u got any virus progs or spyware progs?

when the cpu has too much to think about and cant handle mor estuff it will start to heat up and if it gets to hot it will shut itself down

if you have alot fo things open at a tme it may be worth getting more ram ....


also it could be a virus i had one that did that try and run spyware search and destroy and also search for documents or files created at the same time that it started happening


also the simplest thign could well be the answer and it could be that stupid stickykeys thing happened to me the other day and it restarted everytime i pressed some letter ont he keyboard cant remember whcih one it wa sbecause the shift or ctrl key was held down cant remember which


in the start bar by the clock is there a bunch of squares and rectangles one of them filled in in black tharts stickykeys hold ctrl and shift for a little while and it will switch off make sure you hold them each time the coputer stars up and it will switch it off

Classic sign of overheating, other than that my money would be on a dodgy driver. Has your BIOS got a health check sub menu? if so check it next time it reboots and check out the temp. A good utility for monitoring CPU temps is "Motherboard Monitor"

http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

Mac

overheating was also my first guess as in above post


more ram and more fans in the case


www.aria.co.uk

Ditto on the overheating thing...

Loose CPU heatsink and also northbridge heatsink can cause random restarts also...

But that's from an overclockers point of view...

^^ Ditto the other things above though ^^

Open case and put big fan pointing towards it to rule out overheating. Then look at other stuff...

Chris.

From past experience I'd say faulty memory.

For the computer to randomly restart and not just under load I'd say it's not overheating..

If it was that it'd just shut down and do naff all, but for it to restart...

Memory.

i had a worm cause that trouble in the past.

Just to get told that I don't know what I'm talking about....

These were the exact same symptoms that my PC presented shortly before the power supply blew itself up.....and set fire to the carpet! My advice get yourself a standby PSU.

See this thread

http://locostbuilders.co.uk/viewthread.php?tid=31091

We reseated all the cards and memory and vacuumed all the dust and fluff out.

Problem gone away

Cheers

Mark

I had a problem like this.

Turned out the CPU had fried becasue one of the fans had failed

It was an Athlon K7 i think.

I would have thought checking for overheating as suggested above would be the best place to start.

HTH