Kevin said:
My computer seems to randomly shut itself down for no
reason. Worse, it doesn't give me a message or a reason
for doing it -- it just turns itself off. Has anyone
ever heard of anything like this before? Please help
me.
Unfortunately, this isn't enough information to get a specific answer.
The first thing to do is to stop the computer from rebooting on failure
by going to the System Applet in Control Panel, from there click on
Advanced>Advanced>Startup and Recovery>Settings and under System
Failure uncheck "Automatically Restart". This will hopefully give you a
blue screen with a Stop Error on failure. Write the Stop Error down.
You can research Stop Errors here:
http://www.aumha.org/win5/kbestop.htm
Another thing to consider is that random failures often are
hardware-related. Here are some generic hardware troubleshooting steps:
1) open the computer and run it open, cleaning out all dust bunnies and
observing all fans (overheating will cause system freezing); 2) test
the RAM - I like Memtest86 from
www.memtest86.com - let the test run
for an extended (like overnight) period of time - unless errors are
seen immediately; 3) test the hard drive with a diagnostic utility from
the mftr.; 4) the power supply may be going bad or be inadequate for
the devices you have in the system; 5) test the motherboard with
something like TuffTest from
www.tufftest.com. Testing hardware
failures often involves swapping out suspected parts with known-good
parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are uncomfortable
opening your computer, take the machine to a good local computer repair
shop (not a CompUSA or Best Buy type of store).
Malke
