Computer turns off by itself

[Jeff Graham]

My wife's Compaq Presario 5000 turns off by itself after about 10-15 (with
no error messages) minutes whenever she plays games on it. Also it did the
same twice when she attempted to do a factory restore using the recovery CD.
But when it runs idle it doesn't turn off.
When it turns off, she cam turn it back on with no problem and there are no
"serious error" messages or anything.
It's running WinXP Home with 256 MB RAM and 1.4 GHz Pentium processor.
Some one suggested it might be the fan, but whern I took the side panel off
and observed it while it was running, the both the CPU fan and the Power
Supply fan were running fine.

 

[Chris Stolworthy]

What are the temps when it is idle, and just before it shuts itself off?
Also it might be the power supply is fluctuating voltages which can force a
reboot, also a possiblity of ram. I would suggest, first get temp readings
from the pc, second goto http://www.memtest86.com/ and get the utility there
and check the ram for a couple of hours, and third, if you can monitor the
voltages from your PSU. Post results back here.

-Chris

 

[w_tom]

Manufacturer provides diagnostics. What did they say?
Memtest86 is a good test, but, for intermittents, better to
heat memory with a hairdryer on high when doing the test.
That temperature - uncomfortable to touch but does not burn
skin - is quite normal temperature for any functional memory.
But intermittent memory fails more often at that higher,
normal temperature.

Power supply is still unknown until a 3.5 digit multimeter
confirms its integrity. Your eyes cannot see electrons or
voltages. Fan works fine but voltages can still be bad:
http://tinyurl.com/2gjet . Chart for voltage limits:
Voltage Wire Color Min V Max V
+5 V Red 4.75 V 5.25 V
-5 V White -4.75 V -5.25 V
+12 V Yellow 11.4 V 12.6 V
-12 V Blue -11.4 V -12.6 V
+3.3 V Orange 3.135 V 3.465 V
+5VSB Purple 4.75 5.25
!Power On Green 0.8 2.0
Power OK Gray >2.4 when power is good


Since using reliable NT based OS, then system stores a
system (event) log. What does that log say?

 

[Paul L]

can you try another ram stick?
reseat all plug-in cards
check you fan speeds in the bios. My amd fan was bad (slow/skipping) but pc
would work as long as it was idling..

 

[Michael Enzweiler]

You say that there are "no 'serious error' messages" when the computer
is turned back on. Does this mean that it doesn't report an improper
shutdown and run a disc check when you restart it? I would think that
if the problem was power, Windows would definitely rate this as an
improper shutdown when you try to restart it. In fact, I'm having
trouble thinking of any cause that wouldn't trigger an improper shutdown
detection. When the computer shuts down, is there any 'Windows Shutting
Down' message, or does the computer just switch off with no warning?

Check your power cable connections, make certain they're all firmly
seated (yeah, I know this is remedial, but sometimes it works). Also,
if the computer is plugged into a surge protector or any other type of
octopus with several things plugged into it, unplug all nonessential
devices and try plugging your computer and monitor directly into the
wall outlet, or try another wall outlet.

Watch your wife playing her games, look for something that happens each
time the shutdown occurs. Is it when she's moving the mouse? Typing?
Is it when the game tries to access the hard drive or cd-rom drive, or
when some sound occurs? These would point to problems with the hardware
involved.

This may not work because the problem only seems to be happening when
the computer is not idle, but you might try it anyway: Click Start,
then Control Panel, then Performance and Maintenance. Click on the
Power Schemes tab and make sure your computer is set to 'Always On' and
that all of the other settings on this page are set to 'Never'. Also
click on the Hibernate tab and uncheck 'Enable hibernation'.

Make certain you have no screensaver set. Run MSCONFIG and click on the
Startup tab, uncheck every non-windows program that loads onto your
computer on startup. Reboot. Don't worry, you can run MSCONFIG again and
recheck them later. This helps to make sure that something running in
the background isn't causing problems.

Lastly, check the recommended requirements on the box of the games she's
running. Ignore minimum requirements, they're usually bullshit. If her
games are designed for a better system, that could be a problem too.

Good luck

Michael

 

[jason.gay]

Jeff,
I've got a user's pc (which is a Presario 5000) having the same
symptoms as you described in your thread. Was the issue ever resolved?
I see the same power off issue even if booting to dos from a boot
disk....which should rule the os out. I replaced the heat sink. The
user took the machine to a local supply store. They wanted to replace
the mb. I'm guessing that if the mb was the culprit, it would fail POST
tests and beep a sequence. I'm not seeing this. Within XP, the event
manager doesn't record anything unusual after the power loss. Memory
checks out ok. I'm curious about the power supply being flaky.

 

[Noozer]

Mainboard/PSU/Overheating... not necesarily in that order.