My system have occasionaly been shuting down abruptly. It goes off suddenly without previous warnings. I suspect this is a software problem, but dont know how to verfy that and what is causing it. It also gives me the "system have recovered from a serious error" message at startup everytime even after I shutdown and restart normaly. Any suggestion on how to troubleshoot this shutdown problem?

If you are familiar with the 'blue screen of death' errors of previous Windows versions, the current actions of XP are to shutdown automatically.. unfortunately, Microsoft made no provision to even suggest what the error had been. I would try to use the System Restore feature hoping to go back to a date prior to beginning of your problem. If this does not work, you will have to turn off the auto-shutdown feature in order to get some indication of a problem.. disable Startup and Recovery in My Computer Properties. Right-click on My Computer and select properties. Click advanced tab, click settings under Startup and Recovery, When window opens, you will see system failures. Un-Check "Automatically restart". If system fails, it will not automatically restart. The box is checked by default. hope this helps

Dear friend, A few suggested activities are: 1)install XP SP1 (service pack1),the problem you mentioned of the message occuring every time even if you properly shutdown and restart was an issue with XP. 2)control panel>power option,here select the minmal powermanagement scheme. 3)make sure your are getting stable power supply from mains i.e no power surge or dip. 4)verify that you are not using any software which monitors CPU temperature and is configured to shut down the system when a certain temperature is exceeded,software like (CPU cool,MBM5,etc),the same features are also sometimes available in certain BIOS under hardware monitor section called THERMAL SHUTDOWN etc. 5)if possible check the voltages supplied by the SMPS inside your system.by using softwre like MBM5. amit_nine03@yahoo.co.in