XP restarts on its own

[Kyle]

Hi:

my computer shuts down and restarts randomly, I have done
virus scans and have not found any. Is there a way to fix
this.

Thanks

Kyle

 

[RJK]

One of many possibilities is that your bios may need upgrading. A little
bit time consuming to determine whether this is the cause of your problem.
You have to determine your make, model and hardware revision of your
motherboard, and your current bios version. Then visit your motherboard
manufacturers web-site and research the newer bios's posted for your board -
to see if any of the revisions solve this problem. This is an issue with
some Asus motherboards. ( I love Asus - trouble is, they keep churning out
new boards before they ever finish the slightly older ones !! )

regards, Richard

 

[Alex Nichol]

my computer shuts down and restarts randomly, I have done
virus scans and have not found any. Is there a way to fix
this.

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 well now get a Blue
Screen failure instead

The most probable causes for random failing are

Overheating (check that the CPU fan is running enthusiastically. get
the free Aida 32, enterprise edition from
http://www.aida32.hu/aida-download.php?bit=32
which is an excellent general System Info tool, and its Computer -
Sensors will tell you the CPU temperature - regard anything over 140 F
as undesirable: any thing over 155 is at the limit or beyond

Bad RAM - set Memtest86 from www.memtest86.com and give it a good long
run

Possibly a driver, when the bottom line of the Blue screen will
consistently indicate the drive file concerned - something.sys. Look
for it in system32\drivers, r-click and Properties - Version will
indicate what it relates to