Computer Restarts Itself - Comments Page 5

My computer had been on all day and working perfectly. I went to go back on it, and all of the sudden, it decides to restart itself. I thought, "Okay, the power cord must've been hit or something." But, it kept doing it within the first thirty seconds of the computer being on (I'm on a different computer right now). It had been fine all day, and right when I clicked on something when I came back to the computer, it did that. I now have it turned off because I've read the page and figure that it may be a temperature problem (even though my computer's in a cold basement). I don't know much about the insides of a computer (I didn't even know how to put my graphics card in). What do you suggest I try doing, or looking at?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Download the free SpeedFan software to check for elevated temps. You won't have to open the hood for this...

I have windows xp on my computer, I was on the internet and all of a sudden the computer said that it needed to restart so I did this. It went to the black screen asking for safe mode, and etc so I tried to put the computer in safe mode so I could see what the problem was. It keeps restarting itself over and over again and windows never reboots. What do you suggest, do I need to reinstall my windows?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's an article that should help: http://ask-leo.com/how_should_i_reinstall_windows.html

My system was restarting and i went into safe mode mistakenly in a means of sorting it out,but now the CPU takes time to come up and when it does the screen shows only straight light blue and white lines.It does not boot normally from desktop again for me to login with my username.I have adjusted the power button and the VGA but no reply.Im so confused and scared.What do i do?

EDITOR'S NOTE: What you mean when you say that you "adjusted the power button and the VGA'?

I had a surge that fried my comp. I replaced the MB, HDD and PS, but now comp will restart itself when it feels like it. Runnin XP. CPU and HDD temps are normal. Memtest didn't pick up anything, ran overnight. Unchecked automatically restart, but it still just restarts without the bsod. Help?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would still suspect the RAM. Swap it out and see if the problem persists.

I have a problem in my PC with MSN and Yahoo Messengers. When i logout my PC gets restarted automatically.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would try re-installing the software for both programs.

Okay same problem here. Now at the start of all this it didnt restart till i played a game e.g warcraft.. the second it opened comp restarted.. then it began restarting without a game running. I opened the side of the comp and was able to play games and it didnt restart for a while. After a 2 days it started restarting wen i played games and the side open. Then the frequency of the restarts went on increasing witout playing games and now it restarts wen the boot menu comes up.

Somehow it wont restart if i dont do anything. But if i open another program it restarts. I need help plz!!! i got temp 1 which is 35C temp 2 = 60 temp 3 = 19C HD0 = 40 Temp 1 = 61

EDITOR'S NOTE: I would try replacing the RAM.

i'm using WindowsXP-sp2, i'v formatted n installed windows-xp twice but still i'm facing the same problem that my pc restarts whenever i try to download any EXE file, itz just drivin me nuts now ,, somebody plzz help.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like you picked up a virus after the (re)install. Are you running anti-virus protection?

I've been dealing with an HP 762n onto which I freshly installed XP 5 months ago without issues. Recently, after bootup, the monitor would go black, while the PC continue to run. I heard that the nVidia MX-420 which was OEM installed, had many issues, so I swapped it for another working nVidia AGP 4X card.

A few times after bootup, it gave me the error that "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: system32\drivers\pci.sys" I took out the RAM and re-seated it. Now it runs for about 30 minutes and then restarts on its own. I cleaned the inside (fans,heatsinks, etc.)

BTW, this is a wonderful site and its regularly updated, which is rare nowadays. Thanks for the good info.

I have tried a few times to back up all the files on my computer on to an external hard drive and it restarts during the process. Once it got 40 Gigs into the backup, the second time it got about 2 gigs into it, this third time it got about 27 gigs into it. I check the event viewer and nothing weird is on there. My hard drives are running at about 50 Degrees Celsius and my CPU is running at about 40-45. Not sure about ram temperature though. I'm pretty sure the power supply is big enough it says 550 Watts.

Also after it starts up again i don't get a "Windows has recovered from a serious error" type screen. It's like the reboot never happened, but i watch it. It was like i pressed the reset button. I'm burning some important stuff to DVDs right now, but hopefully you have some insight here. Just want my system and files safely on the external drive...then it can die on me :-)

EDITOR'S NOTE: What software are you using to copy the disk? I like Acronis for my daily disk dumps.

Thanks a lot man. My PC was restarting again and again on startup. On reading your post. I went in safemode. Removed heavy startup applications. (Really sad to part with objectdock & launchy.) And unchecked the automatically restart option. And *drum roll* Now its working fine. Again. Thanks man. Ciao.

I had to remove Sopcast which is a P2P download so I can watch football & baseball games. My computer kept resetting and the cpu got hot. After removing Sopcast I haven't had any problems.

Hi bob. My computer of 1yr, randomly restart itself. I alerady reformat the com, currently using win xp sp2. Added an additional ram of 512,total 1GB ram now. Com reboot mostly during my game play like CS, FIFA07, or even watching video online I could get reboot too. using geforce 5200.

When I start the computer it load 10 seconds and then a black screen appears for 5 seconds and then it restart it self . Please help me , reply to me on my e-mail , I really need some help . Thanks .

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like your boot record is damaged. If you can boot to SAFE MODE, you can try the FIXMBR or FIXBOOT commands. See http://askbobrankin.com/hard_drive_recovery.html

This is a new comp... Core2Duo 2.67GHz, Intel Mobo DG33FB, Kingston 1GB DDR2, Seagate 160GB SATA. Runs XP-SP2. Not used for any gaming. Just simple MSoffice/tally, email/chat/orkut and downloading movies using utorrent. No other download utilities. Web browser IE6. A/V Norton-no firewall.

First time it started restarting, it wud do it after exactly 1 hour! Continued this for 1 full day. Then worked fine for several weeks. No other paatern for restart. I could be doing anything. May or may not be connected to the internet. But nowadays, there isnt even that ONE-HOUR pattern. It has become totally random. I could work on it without any prb for days! And then suddenly it wud restart! Weird.

Synchronize time with internet is unchked. Prc temp & Mobo temp: avg 45C. SystemRestore/AutoUpdates/RemoteDesktop all OFF. Automatic restart is currently on coz I wanna try to figure out whts causing this. Event viewer log also doesnt gv any pattern at the times it restarts.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I agree these problems are frustrating, but you have to start swapping out components (RAM, HD, fans, etc.) until you find the cause.

Here's a weird one. I was running Windows 2000 and most of the time (~95%) I logged on to Windows Live Mail my computer would just restart. The old version of hotmail worked fine. It's the new version "Windows Live Mai" that was causing me fits.

It was annoying but I put up with it for a while. Recently I installed a new hard drive and upgraded to Windows XP hoping that the problem would go away. To my surprise the problem was still there...log on to Windows Live Mail...restart. Any other suggestions? I find it weird that it happens only when I am opening Windows Live Mail.

I'm gonna check what is going on with the PC temperature and see that the fan is working adequately and I will check that the RAM is okay but I don't know that either of these is the real issue. It only happens with Windows Live Mail!

EDITOR'S NOTE: One other person reported to me that something similar happened after upgrading from Hotmail to Windows Live Mail. Can you go back to Hotmail?

Hi Bob...Al again. I think the old version of hotmail no longer works. I think it has all gone to Live Mail.

Thanks for the help Bob. I think I may have made some headway into finding the cause of the problem and a solution that has worked so far! Really simple actually and I'm almost embarrassed to say that I never thought of it....I switched to Firefox....Logged on to Windows Live Mail about a dozen times so far and it hasn't restarted on me yet!

This leads me to conclude that the problem is not my PC but it was something in the Internet Explorer Browser. Incidentally this problem was occurring when I was running IE 6 and IE 7. I installed IE 7 hoping the problem would go away but it obviously didn't. So far Firefox is working out really well.

Have a problem with my new pc where it restarts itself randomly, if i try and play a 3d game it will restart almost immidiatly.

Tried the 3 suggestions on top with no success, tried a new power suplly, downloaded the latest drivers, to no avail.

Any suggestions?

HELP! my pc is driving me nuts! everytime i load up a disk in my dvd rom,my pc shut itself and i noticed that the green light on my pc is still lit...then i tried to remove the dvd rom my pc cant boot up,i tried replacing the dvd rom, it wont boot...now i connected again the old dvd rom my pc boots up again, but i cant use my dvd rom because every time it loads the pc shuts itself...ooohhh god.. i dont know what to do...pls help me!

I can't believe that the original article doesn't at least mention the infamous BAD CAPACITOR problem that plagued many motherboards manufactured a few years ago. see: http://badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=5

In my experience as a computer hardware technician, I've found that bad caps are BY FAR the most common culprit behind a random/spontaneous reboot problem. The second-most common reason is a faulty power supply - also not mentioned in the original article.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Thanks for mentioning bad capacitors. They often get lumped in the "bad motherboard" category. I've updated the article with a summary of what people should look for when diagnosing the restart problem.