Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
everything was working fine today and it all of the sudden restarted. no warning screen or anything. it just restarted without me doing anything. then it keeps doing the same thing. i can sometimes get into windows for 30 seconds but then it restarts. it keeps doing this. safe mode has been working fine except the last time the same problem happened while i was in it. earlier, while in safe mode, i scanned my hard drives for viruses, found nothing. this leads me to believe that it has to be a virus only detectable by an online scan. the problem is i cant get online long enough to scan my hard drive. i cant figure out how to get online in safe mode either cause it isn't working. do you know how i can? it has to be a virus right? cause i didn't change any settings or anything.
i have tried system restore, i have tried scanreg/restore, and i have tried going into system tools and using that approach. still no luck. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks
0 
u might want to look at your power supply. Sometimes one that is ready to go out will restart on it"s own your prob may be there
0
Could also be a bad RAM problem. So run a good long stand alone memory test from their boot diskette.
DocMemory_v2.0
0
hello
open up the side of your computer,s case and than look to see ifcpu fan is running. try restating and shutting down 10 times or untill you see if fan is starting each time.
allso excessive dust could cause over heating allso.
0
thanks for the response so far. i am beginning to think it may be the power supply, but is there a way i can be sure?
0
hey i think i have the same problem these guys do, my computer is almost brand new and it is so screwed up my problem is you will be in the middle of doing somthing just anything and my computer will restart on its own, just out of nowhere just restart right in the middle of somthing especially anything having to do with MP3s such as my music match jukebox you will be listing to music and it will just restart or there will be a green line that comes at the top of the screen and thats when its froze, thats how you can tell is when that green line comes up at the top its froze and especially burning cds it will restart EVERY time when your burning a cd, ive been to microsoft and checked for updates and downloaded all of them, ive tried to defragmate the drive and it freezes or restarts and especially when your installing somthing from a cd it will not install the program just restart, does anyone have the same problem if you have any advice for me write me please-thanks oh also i have checked my memory and there is like 87% free so i dont know what the problem is so if anybody has any suggestions plese wright me back
0
Very intereting!
I have a question: Have you moved your computer from another room? I you have, check the power coming from the wall AC Pover, maybe there isn't enough power torun your machine. Make sure you know what you're doing. AC power could cause serious damage to your body.As it was suggested before: check the CPU, if the CPU fan is not working the chip must be taking a lot of heat and it is not cooling and that's why PC reboots. Check RAM too. A good thing to do is to check the power coming into the Hard Drive.
Let us know the outcome of this please.
Robert
0
hey robert thanks for replying, but i havent moved the computer it has been in this room since we got it, however we did remodel this room and we had to take it down for a few weeks, how would i go about seeing if the correct amount of power is comming from the outlet to make sure my machine has enough power to run? and im not sure if the fan is running or not, i hear stuff in there running so maybe i will check that out, what chip are you talking about taking to much heat? if that is the case are you sure that would cause the machine to restart? also about the RAM you mention the computer had 128 MB of RAM and we upgraded to 256 MB of RAM and that is when it started doing it, we put the RAM in and it poped up all these error messages and then it would just restart that is when it started doing it but we went to circut city to get the RAM and they told us the exact RAM to go in here also when it did that we took the RAM out and it still did it so we just put it back in because i figured it wouldent matter if it was going to do it anyway, hey robert you dont happen to know what that green line is that i was talking about that comes up out of nowhere when it freezes, its just a green line that comes up at the top of the screen when it freezes, anyway robert if you get time write me an email at tarheelblue0232@aol.com if you have some spare time you seem to know what your talking about and i would like to talk to you more, also Robert, i know that microsoft quit making my version of windows witch is Windows ME i am going to be upgrading to Windows XP very soon do you think that will help?
0
Matt:
A power supply is only 25.00 or so or u can also buy a power supply checker which the cost is around 7.00 -10.00 or see if you can use one from a friend if willing. wawadave has a good point if the cpu heat sink is dirty with lint the cpu will overheat and cause restart. so vacume the tower to make sure it is clean. I use my air compressor at home and blow the power supply out also.
0
Matt: Could you tell us what I have you done to fix the problem so that we can give you some extra help.
Robert
0
Matt: I meant what you have done to fix the problem (Not What I have done).
I apologize for my bad grammar.
Robert
0
i had a similar problem once and i got soo pissed off that i totally rebuilt my PC... yes took it apart and rebuilt it... it turns out that the motherboard was shorting itself with the case! so make sure that there is the correct spacing with the motherboard and the case...
ie when u buy these things motherboards come with plastic spacings so u can have a gap when screwing in ur m/b...
goodluck!
ohu could try buying a hd (small one) install winXp then see if it still restarts... if it does then its a h/w problem... if it doesn't then wipe the hd and give it back to the shop ;P then wipe ur original hd and install a new OS.
0
okay here it goes. i can no longer get into windows on normal or safe mode. i have tried scandisk/all at the prompt but my computer jams up and i dont know how to resume from where i left off. i have also tried scanreg/restore and system restore but those both dont work. my computer still restarts. then i vaccuumed my tower (inside/out), and double checked to make sure all the fans were running, and they were. earlier i took out the power to my dvd rom and cd burner yet my computer still restarted. this leads me to believe it cant be the power supply, but something else. is it still possible it may be my fans even though they are running? or could it be something much much worse? thanks for the help
0
Power still to your motherboard not cd burner or dvd.fans are running but cannot tell if overheating So i would use a friends power supply or buy a power supply tester or just take the plunge and buy a power supply ( they are not much).if you look you can find a case with power supply cheaper than just the power supply.
0
My problem exactly. Intermitent power supply. About a week ago my computer started hanging in the middle of startup, two days of testing parts, and it POP went back up, no help from me. one week of running fine, then one day freezes on desktop. then it begins to freeze all the time, about twenty seconds after startup, in CMOS, scandick, wherever it was, it would just hang, then restart. Here it is , doing it again. Tested everything except the MBoard alone (kinda hard). New power supply now, and wham , right back up and running. Was a HELLatious problem, beat myself over the head for weeks. Shorting out is case too, is a big one, do not overlook it. Sometimes a full rebuild works, if you dont want to try the buy-and-see method. Hope your problem get fixxed
0
Yup, new power supply and everything is fine. I tested EVERYTHING! I figured the power supply was either good or bad, but it isnt that simple. Turned out something in my power supply case was burning out. I opened it and the thing was a ring of black ashes. New power supply installed and everything is going great. I know it seems like a virus, or cmos prob, but was hanging even with NO hard drive, and hanging in CMOS. Last thing i looked at was Power Supply, just coz it goes on and looks like it works dont mean its working. its pretty cheap to fix too hope this helps you.
0  |
 |
 |
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
