My problem began similarly to many of yours, turning off at first just while playing counter-strike or other pc games. Then as time passed by, i the pc continued to worsen, randomly turning off while scrolling through web pages on the internet, and even right after a regular reboot of my system. At first I was searching google to see what other people were saying about this problem and most people agreed that it must b a problem with the chips of RAM. So i ordered a new chip...i ordered a 1 gigabyte chip, and realized that the ram was not the problem because the computer continued to randomly turn off. So I added my old chip of 512 mb back in... So anywho my next thought was that my power supply was going bad...doot doot doooo of course that wasnt the problem either. I replaced the old power supply with a brand new power supply that was originally meant to go in the new computer im building. So...of course...after spending money on a new power supply i realized that wasnt the problem either...the original power supply was perfectly fine and i just wasted more money on a new 1. The computer of course, continued to restart randomly even with the new power supply... So after giving the entire pc a good cleaning and dusting, i took the cpu apart from its fan applied some coolant too make sure it stayed at a fair temperature. The cpu temperature was never higher than it was supposed to be so i doubt the problem lies within it. The average temperature of my cpu is around 28 degrees. So now that i kno its not the ram, cpu, and its not the power supply...im pretty damn sure its my video card. I have a 64 mb GeForce 4 mx440 in this computer, and i read in an article through google that the random rebooting may be due to a hardware problem in the video card. When your video card activity is idle for short amounts of time, the video card gets caught in a cycle of some sort, and as soon as the computer becomes active once again it automatically reboots. This problem is linked the the video card going bad, by perhaps, just being too old. I've had this video card for quite some time now, and i just bought a new one off of pricewatch.com I bought a 128 mb GeForce 4 mx440 this time and I will let each of you know if this solves the problem. I am nearly 100% certain it will solve my problem, and when it does...back to pwning u noobs in CS. Anywho i hav 50 free invites to GMAIL (google mail) 1 gig of free storage... any1 want gmail?

My reboots only happens on certains games where I enable EAX or maybe hardware sound onto the game. Even though my sounds card claims it supports this. I have sound blaster live! 5.1, and I even contacted them to fix it and their patches are still bugged. But I dont reboot if i disable it. On some games with hardware sound enabled, i get crakling, but on some like KOTOR, its perfectly fine. Yet when I enqable EAX on ANY game its bound to crash and reboot in 30min-2hours. weird stuff. Dell Dimension 4600 Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz w/ HT and 800Mhz fbs. 1.5GB DUAL CHANNEL DDR SDRAM RAM 400mhz ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB DDR 120GB ATA 7200HD Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 4.1 Al

I have the abit nf7m motherboard with the onboard mx 440, so that is my problem with random shutdowns? i should buy a new vid card?but i mean its built into the motherboard can it be the same problem?

i hate to stste the obvious, but why not set the cpu not to reboot on system hangs or other problems control panel/system/advanced/startup and recovery. while there set the startup halts to 3 secs instead of 30 secs this might help. you can also check in right clcik,my computer/manage/event viewer. you should get some info on what is causing your reboots i hate computers! but cant help myself....

Also, just because your pc has a low temp setting doesn't mean that your graphics card is running cool. Playing the intense higher ended games of today will tax a low end graphics card fairly quickly. Add this to a heated ram chip and it will cause a system to reboot. Sometimes it is a mutitude of little things that cause a big thing to happen. Switching parts is not the answer either. Not too many people have the money to just go out and buy a part because they believe it is bad. There are tests that can be used to determine some issues and without trying them first is kind of like driving with both eyes closed tight. Google for memtest and run it to check out your system ram. Go to www.pcpitstop.com and have them run your system through the bench testing and see what they come up with. IN THE MATTERS OF STYLE, swim with the current; in matters of principle, STAND LIKE A ROCK

ahh yes...i forgot to mention that i tested the temperature of my vid card yesterday. The video card was warm on the outer edge and continued to get hotter toward the agp slot. A "healthy" video card should be no hotter than room temperature.