Hello, I have a very, very big problem with my computer and have no clue where it comes from. I have the following system, brand new components, I assembled it myself piece by piece, here are all the hardware parts, in case you can notice some incompatibility: motherboard:MSI 865PE NEO2-LS Socket478 CPU:Pentium 4 2.4GHz 800FSB w/512K Socket 478 .13 micron. HYPER-THREADING CPU - OEM CD RW:Teac 52x24x52 CD-RW - Internal - IDE VIDEO:MSI GeForce4 MX 440 8x AGP 64MB MX440-T8X DDR RAM :Enet,256MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM 400Mhz unbuffered 2.5v 184pin HDD :Maxtor EIDE 40.0GB 7200RPM 40GB ATA-133 EIDE 40.0 GB UDMA 7200rpm EIDE The first OS I tried to install was win 98 Second Edition, installation did not go fine, it gave me a registry error. After several similar attempts, the best I could do was installing all the drivers, but registry errors kept occuring and made the futher operation of the system impossible. I switched to Win XP SP1 Professional, and the installation worked just fine. After about a week of work, the machine began to restart itself randomly without any visible reason at least once a day. That continued for a while as the frequency of the restarts increased dramatically - 10-15 times a day without any warning massage or error being displayed. I undertook a drastical action and low-level formatted my harddisk with the tool provided by Maxtor Company. I frastrated to see both Win XP Professional and Rad Hat Linux 9.0 ended up giving me an error massage during the installation. It was: either installation CD is corrupt or you have a hardware problem. I can certify the all the installation CDs (Win XP, Linux 9.0 and Win 98) were in original and in perfect shape. After very persisitant attempts I finally managed to install Win XP with no error. It worked fine for few weeks. Then it started to restart the same way it did before. With time the restart are becoming more and more frequent. I'm open to any suggestion you might have, because the cituation is getting deasperate. Thank you very much in advance, Martin

How about your power supply? Is it new, and is it a good quality unit? A cheap power supply will cause many problems that may appear to e something different. Rebooting like that sounds like a bad power supply, or overheating. The latter can definitely cause the former. Make sure the power supply fan is spinning. And, never underestimate the value of clean power.

This is probably not relevant to your set up but what the hell... We had the same problems with XP Pro, and changed the PSU, Mobo and CPU but still it happened. We finally got our ISP to admit that the ADSL modem they gave us is known to draw too much current from the USB bus, causing a random power-down and reboot. This happens whether connected to the internet or not. If you're not using an Alcatel ADSL modem then I'd look at PSU rating, CPU temperature (in BIOS screen if present)and finally check for viruses. Good luck

Thank you very much for the quick responses guys. I appreciate that. Back to the problem. 1.My power supply is 550W , brand new with 2 eternal fans, both seems to be working, I can't tell at what speed and how efficient. Please suggest where can I check that, if it is important.I will try to clean the power suply interior, but it is only 3 months old and the problem existed even when I have just installed it. 2.I have just installed the mainboard Utility provided by MSI, the manufacturer of my mainboard. It gave me the following info under Windows:CPU Temp - 47C, Sys Temp - 43C, NB temp - 53C (what is NB by the way?), CPU fan speed - 3245rpm, Sys fan speed - 0rpm (if that is the small fan on my mainboard it is spinning!), NB fan speed - 6490rpm. Vcore = 1.52V, 3.3V=3.3V, +5V=5V, +5V=5V, +12V=11.88V ( I guess the last few umbers are ok). This maintanance utility gives me some options for adjusting temp and alarms, so if tell me if I can change something. 3.I do not have a modem at all. I have only 10\100 LAN and Sound on my mainboard. I use internet through the LAN of the college campus with my LAN card. Thank you once again! I'm looking forward to your advices, Martin

It still sounds like hardware, but your Power Supply sounds like it is just fine. Lets rule out the operating system Boot up with a boot disk and let it run for a day or so - see if it begins to restart. There are shareware and freeware DOS programs like burnin that will run tests on the computer. If you do not use one of these, just boot with the boot floppy and then remove it. If the system restarts you will know it because it will boot back into Windows. If it does restart, we know itt's hardware. If it doesn't, it's software related. (Unlikely in my opinion.) At this point, I would try to remove various unecessary components (like the sound card, etc) one at a time. run the system and see if it reboots. If it does, remobve another device (modem, etc) When you are down to just the memory the hard drive, & the video card (everything else unplugged / disconnected) you are close. If it continues to restart, try different memory. You can also look at the manual for the motherboard and/ or computer and make sure that the jumper settings are all correct. If it STILL restarts, then you likely have a bad motherboard

I have the same problem as you! Mine doesn't restart as often thought. As I look at your system requirements I see one thing in common, it's our motherboards. I just started to try and debug this, but try updating the AMD BIOS on the board. The real issue has something to do with Direct X and the video resolution. I'm running at 1024 X 768. Is this your video resolution too.

OK, i installed the latest BIOS for the motherboard v1.9. The comp worked fine for a while and finally it restarted randomly on me. So it's not the BIOS, but i still know that it has something to do with the motherboard because I have the same motherboard in two different computers and they both restart randomly.