I have an Acer Aspire 3000 which seems to be full of problems, so here goes. After getting it back after year of my cousin, it was full of viruses and running like a dog. I removed all the unnecessary programs and installed AVG and cleared 27 viruses of it!! I then tried to run Spybot S&D but half way through the scan the laptop powered down. I have cleaned the CPU fan and bought a new power supply all to no avail. So I removed the partition with the hope of formatting the HDD and reinstalling windows. However ~20% of the way through the format the same thing happens laptop powers down. I’ve read a few threads and got Hiren’s BootCD 9.3, I ran Active Kill and it managed to work its way through all 3 passes howevr when analysing, right at the very end same happened powered down. I’ve tried to run GoldMemory 5.07 RAM Test utility however this also powers down the laptop. What’s going on? Im in the process of running HDD Regenerator 1.51 (whether this is a HDD problem I don’t know). I’m not too sure where to go from here, so absolutely any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks In advance

you might want to check the cpu heat sink as it could be filled with dust and check the heatsink grease as it may neek to be replaced. you might want to go into bios and double check the settings for the cpu also. Since you don't know how the computer was kept up as far as cleaness these are a few suggestions.

Thanks. I’ve checked all the internals and they look like new. However ive been over the lot with the hoover.

Have you checked the cpu fan speed? It maybe not be spinning fast enough to keep ther cpu cool and shutting down the laptop

just a thought having only 256 megs for memory might not be enough for vista to load, try XP and see if it will install. Also did you try taking battery out and have laptop unplugeed to make sure their is no viruses staying in memory? or tried using just the power cord with battery out and install operating system?