System Reboots even when Idle?

[Rich]

Hi,
I built a Pent III 600 with 512 MB of Ram, xp Pro
and after an hour or two of sitting idle it will
reboot.

No blue screen, error message or scan as if
improper shut down.

Using Norton Antivirus thats up to date as well
as spybot & pest patrol.

Any suggestions would be appreciated,
Rich

 

[Malke]

Hi,
I built a Pent III 600 with 512 MB of Ram, xp Pro
and after an hour or two of sitting idle it will
reboot.

No blue screen, error message or scan as if
improper shut down.

Using Norton Antivirus thats up to date as well
as spybot & pest patrol.

I would suspect hardware. Your power supply may be old and dying. Your
RAM may be bad, hard drive failing, etc. Here are generic steps for
testing hardware:

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.

Malke

 

[Alex Nichol]

I built a Pent III 600 with 512 MB of Ram, xp Pro
and after an hour or two of sitting idle it will
reboot.

No blue screen, error message or scan as if
improper shut down.

You have something that is crashing - and the system's 'automatically
restart' is cutting in. Turn this off: in Control Panel - System -
Advanced, click Settings in the Startup and Recovery section. There
uncheck 'automatically restart'. You can also usefully change the
'write debugging information' to (none). You may now get a Blue screen
failure instead, but at least will get some guidance as to what is
happening. Maybe hardware problems, maybe a driver (in which case you
will see a reference to 'something.sys. at the bottom of the blue
screen)