Unexpected Reboots

[Fred 2002]

I leave my desktop on all day long and shut it down overnight. I am running
XP Home, SP2. A few days ago, I returned to find that the machine had
rebooted itself (I have a few unique things that are on screen at startup).
A few days later I saw it reboot while I was at the machine. My guess is
that this may be happening once or twice per day. This behavior started
within the last few weeks. It never occurred before. I have AVG antivirus
and Spybot S&D.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

When you saw it happen, was it a normal shutdown (with the same look as when
you deliberately restart) or did the machine just suddenly go blank and
immediately commence the boot procedure? Question is, was it a programmatic
restart or did the hardware reboot itself. If the latter, you probably have
a over-heating issue or other hardware failure. If the former, does it just
happen or do you get a warning? Note that just because you have AV and
anti-spyware doesn't mean something didn't get in.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I leave my desktop on all day long and shut it down overnight. I am running
XP Home, SP2. A few days ago, I returned to find that the machine had
rebooted itself (I have a few unique things that are on screen at startup).
A few days later I saw it reboot while I was at the machine. My guess is
that this may be happening once or twice per day. This behavior started
within the last few weeks. It never occurred before. I have AVG antivirus
and Spybot S&D.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

You are presumably blue-screening, and you are set to the default of
rebooting whenever that happens. Right-click My Computer, and choose
Properties. On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and
Recovery. Under System failure, uncheck the box "Automatically
restart.

Now when the problem occurs again, instead of restarting, you will get
the blue screen with diagnostic information. Post back with those
details for more help.

Also note that this is usually a hardware problem. I'd suspect
overheating, flaky power supply, or bad or flaky RAM.

 

[Fred 2002]

Thanks for the replies. When I saw it happen, the machine just started the
boot process immediately: there was no programmatic shutdown sequence. Based
on the comments from both replies, the overheating issue stands out. I have
been having problems with an occasional VERY noise PS fan. It stays noisy
for some time (an hour or so) and then suddenly quiets down. There are no
replacements for it as it is not in manufacture any more. I may have to live
with the issue for a while because my office server runs on XP and all the
new PCs seem to run Vista. Thanks again for your expert analysis.