Random PC Reboots

Hello,

Two weeks ago my computer started rebooting randomly averagely once each third hour or so. At least at first it seemed random, but I've noticed that it oftens do it when I exit a big program. The last few days it has started doing it more often and without me doing anything with special on the computer.

I talked to some friends about it, and one of them said he had experienced exacly the same once with his old computer. He said it properly just were some disfunctionality in the hardware. I've had this computer for about 2 years, and it has never acted this way before. I've not done any harm psysically to my computer for at least the last 2 months, so I find it really strange that it should just appear out of thin air.

So, do you think this is a hardware error? If so, anyhow I can fix it?

Hi,

What OS? XP?

If it a hardware error, I guess you must know which one and then bring a new one.

- George

Windows XP: Home Edition. Myself I believe its a hardware error either in my memory or the computer overheating because of some disfunctionality with my fan?

Do you get a blue screens? or does it just reboot without any warrning/error?

their may be a problem with an app/process which runs when the pc is idle; when a program performs an illegal operation in XP (would have bluescreened in 9x/ME) it auto reboots, with no warning..

It may be norton liveupdate, background virus scanning, windows update, or other windows processes which it performs when idling, such as optimizing the layout of files and directories on the hard drive etc.

this is only a possible cause to your problem, hope it helps solve or at least eliminate a possibility!!

I get no warnings as all. It looks exact as if I had just turned on my computer: black screen for a few seconds and then the windows loading logo.

The increasing frequency of the problem sounds like hardware but turn off control panel->system->advanced->startup and recovery->automatically reboot and see if you get a black screen of death with a cryptic error message.

Is the computer oveheating because it is full of dust?
Is the processor fan running?

A failing power supply or a motherboard with leaking capacitors is a common cause of this but there are plenty of possibilitys.

Take a look at this site: http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/showthread.php?t=258338
You're not the first person with that problem ;)

Regards
angelofwisdom