Help! My computer keeps restarting on its own!

[Crystal]

Ever since February 11, 2004, I have had this issue where
my computer has constantly been restarting itself for no
apparent reason! I am currently running Windows XP SP1
Home Edition on a Gateway 500X PC, with 512 MB RAM, 2.6
GHz P4 processor, and a 160 GB hard drive. I came back to
my room that day after attending a course to find that my
computer had restarted itself. I at first thought nothing
of it and tried to log back into my Desktop, but not long
after I logged back in, the system restarted itself again!
I then kept on trying to get back into the Desktop, and
sooner or later the computer ended up restarting itself! I
also got these error messages that said that Windows had
experience a severe error, and it asked me to send an
error report, which I did. It said that it "may" be caused
by a device driver problem, but I looked in the Device
Manager and everything seemed to be working fine. I knew
that prior to that I had reinstalled my HP Deskjet 5650
printer and also Windows Update, so I uninstalled my
printer first since I thought I chose the wrong driver,
but that did not seem to solve the problem. After the
uninstallation of the printer, it again kept restarting! I
then thought maybe it was the recent download of Windows
Update, so I did a System Restore to an earlier time
before I downloaded the new updates, and at first I
thought it solved the issue, but apparently not....so I
called Gateway, and they said it could have been Spyware,
so I downloaded programs to remove most of the spyware,
and at first it seemed to work, but just today I shut down
my computer, and when I tried to log back on it started
rebooting again! If any of you can help me figure out what
may be causing the problem or know exactly what causes the
issue, well any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Haus]

Hello Crystal
It sounds like you have got'n the ole Blaster Virus.

http://www.newtechhelp.com/content/view/10/25/

It is very important that you go to Microsoft Update site and download all
the critical updates for they are for your security and safety reasons.

http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/default.asp

 

[Guest]

do you get any errors when it restarts?
any sort of countdown?
are ou doing anything during these reboots?

 

[Crystal]

Well I know for a fact that it is not the Blaster Worm
virus. I received that virus on my other home computer
before, and I manually removed it and I had even
installed Blaster removal tools to verify that it was
completely removed. I have both Norton Internet Security
and Norton Antivirus on this computer though, and both
are constantly kept up to date with the virus
definitions. Also, I do not get that countdown where it
says it will "reboot in 60 seconds," which is typical for
the BlasterWorm virus. Sometimes, after restarting at
least one time, it will just get up to the log-in screen
to select the users and it will automatically reboot, and
sometimes it will just barely get to the Windows XP
startup screen before it restarts again. However, it has
even gone overnight without restarting, but after I come
back from going out somewhere the following day it has
sooner or later rebooted itself. Sometimes when it starts
back up after restarting itself (but this does not happen
all the time), it says "Windows has received a severe
error" or something like that, and when I read the error
log it referred to a lot of the common .dll files
associated with Windows, such as shell32.dll, among
others. It gave me the option to do a "send error
report," so I did, and it came up that it may have been a
device driver problem... but I do not know which driver
it could be since they all seemed to be working fine, and
of course I uninstalled my printer, but that did not work
at all. That was the most recent "device driver" I
downloaded, at least to my knowledge. I know that this is
not the first case this has happened, since on another
website somebody else had the same issue, but the problem
didn't seem to be resolved. I hope that I can get this
resolved soon! I never know when the computer will
restart again, since it is always very unpredictable. If
any of you have advice, further information, or know
where I can go to find out about this issue, or if you
know what the problem is or can further help me with this
issue, well all help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
~Crystal~

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----
Hello Crystal
It sounds like you have got'n the ole Blaster Virus.

http://www.newtechhelp.com/content/view/10/25/

It is very important that you go to Microsoft Update site and download all
the critical updates for they are for your security and safety reasons.

http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/default.asp

--
Hope this helps
Haus


.
ya buddy sounds like you got VD (virus distruction).Run

your antivirus make sure it's updated,ya and hit that
microsoft update too.Run your ad aware too.If you don't
have it get it at
http://www.webattack.com/get/adaware.shtml
it's FREE ,if that don't work call back to comcraps
support and tell em,you didn't spend all that dough for a
computer that runs like ***t!and let me talk to an
AMERICAN not somebody from India that doesn't know their
*** from a hole in the ground.

 

[Guest]

-----Original Message-----
Well I know for a fact that it is not the Blaster Worm
virus. I received that virus on my other home computer
before, and I manually removed it and I had even
installed Blaster removal tools to verify that it was
completely removed. I have both Norton Internet Security
and Norton Antivirus on this computer though, and both
are constantly kept up to date with the virus
definitions. Also, I do not get that countdown where it
says it will "reboot in 60 seconds," which is typical for
the BlasterWorm virus. Sometimes, after restarting at
least one time, it will just get up to the log-in screen
to select the users and it will automatically reboot, and
sometimes it will just barely get to the Windows XP
startup screen before it restarts again. However, it has
even gone overnight without restarting, but after I come
back from going out somewhere the following day it has
sooner or later rebooted itself. Sometimes when it starts
back up after restarting itself (but this does not happen
all the time), it says "Windows has received a severe
error" or something like that, and when I read the error
log it referred to a lot of the common .dll files
associated with Windows, such as shell32.dll, among
others. It gave me the option to do a "send error
report," so I did, and it came up that it may have been a
device driver problem... but I do not know which driver
it could be since they all seemed to be working fine, and
of course I uninstalled my printer, but that did not work
at all. That was the most recent "device driver" I
downloaded, at least to my knowledge. I know that this is
not the first case this has happened, since on another
website somebody else had the same issue, but the problem
didn't seem to be resolved. I hope that I can get this
resolved soon! I never know when the computer will
restart again, since it is always very unpredictable. If
any of you have advice, further information, or know
where I can go to find out about this issue, or if you
know what the problem is or can further help me with this
issue, well all help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
~Crystal~

.
Go to add/remove programs look for IEFEAT if it's there

deleat it.also task manager -processes look for something
like wudyacatch.exe if it there do a search and remove
it.my norton didn't catch either of em.I was reboot silly
for weeks,cost me 75 bucks for tech. service to fix it.

 

[Crystal]

First of all, I want to thank everyone for their help in
trying to figure out this issue. However, I was
(unfortunately) finally able to determine the cause of my
computer constantly rebooting itself. I again called the
Technical Support for my computer, and they advised me to
write zeros to my hard drive and just restart my computer
all over again. I abided to what they said, but
unfortunately this did not resolve the issue. After
attempting to reload some of my drivers, my computer again
began to automatically restart itself. I then called
Gateway again, and they thought maybe it was a problem
with my drivers. I also asked them the possibility that it
MAY be a hardware problem. They had me run GWSCAN to scan
my hard drive to see if any problems showed up, but at the
time, the scan said that there were no known issues and
that it was funcioning correctly. I decided to go to bed
for the night, but when I awoke I noticed that the
computer screen was a blank black screen. I thought, "well
that is weird," since I had kept my computer on all night,
so I pressed the start button to "restart" the computer,
and it got to the Gateway screen, but after that the
screen went to that same blank black screen and
the "Windows Startup" never even came up. I knew
automatically that my hard drive had failed me!!!!!!!!! I
then went ahead and went to the the DOS Prompt from the
Drivers CD, and I again ran GWSCAN with a full test. Of
course, the results came back what I expected: my hard
drive was experiencing too many known errors, and the
error code showed that the hard drive was malfunctioning
(after consulting Gateway they verified this for me). The
reason my computer kept crashing is because the hard drive
was (slowly) beginning to fail on me, and this morning
just happened to be the morning it did. I only had the
computer for about a year, so I am kind of shocked it
failed on me so soon! I had another Gateway computer prior
to purchasing the one I currently own which was 5 years
old at the time (which was around this time last year),
and the hard drive had failed me, so this is the second
time I had my hard drive crash on me! Gateway is sending
me a new hard drive, though, and then I can again start
anew, hopefully this time problem-free!

 

[Crystal]

Sorry, it turns out my hard drive did NOT fail on me. It
must have been one of the driver updates I downloaded
from the Gateway website that caused it to seem to fail,
but it did NOT. Anyway, I was still able to find out why
my computer was restarting itself. It was actually an
error due to a program that I downloaded for my Ethernet
driver from the Drivers CD. I contacted Gateway and they
told me that the application was not necessary to
actually run the driver, which is why I downloaded it in
the first place. I again want to thank everyone who
responded for all their help though! I ended up rebooting
my system AGAIN (by writing zeros to the hard drive, and
then reinstalling the system), and I did a "Quick Test"
in the GWSCAN prompt, and it came up error-free, so now I
know it was not a hard drive failure problem. For those
of you who are experiencing this same problem, make sure
to check the programs you have installed, remove any
unnecessary programs/applications, check in the Device
Manager for driver errors, disable your Startup menu
items (since Spyware can sometimes cause systems to
restart), and DEFINATELY have some form of antivirus
software (such as Norton Antivirus or McAfee ViruScan)
and keep the virus definitions up to date!
~Crystal~

 

[Guest]

hi crystal, i had the same exact problems that you are having, i uninstalled norton internet security professional 2003 and installed EZtrust, my computer has not crashed once in a 2 day period, if you don't have norton, it might be your antivirus and/or firewall program