Computer restarts...

[Paul M]

Eh... well i first had this restart problem yesterday night when i switched my computer off it just restarted instead but since then it has developed.

I came home from Uni earlier and my computer once switched on will only stay on for a max of 3 minutes before restarting. Peacefully too, no errors, blue screens, weird beeps, noises.... nothing just restarts.

I have no idea why.

Any information of guesses are welcome.

[Lord Orwell]

if it's not "shutting down" first then it may be set to automatically restart in case of error. To change this setting do this:
xp:
pretty much though the steps are like this:
hold down WINDOWS and press BREAK.
Click the advanced tab of the open window.
on the advanced tab, choose startup and recovery. It is in there.
vista:
The only real change in vista is "advanced system settings" is on the left menu, and clicking this jumps to the advanced tab.

note: This is as clear as humanly possible, but evidently not clear enough for my mother. I explained this for at least half an hour to her on the phone while she kept saying stuff like "where is the windows button" or "there is no check box" or even "what's a check box". Having her run system restore was even worse. It took 15 minutes for her to find the "accessories" submenu on the start menu.

[Paul M]

Thanks a heap, still unsure how it was enabled though i never go through the settings and no one ever uses that computer unsupervised anyway so im a little worried maybe a virus? Anyway thanks again.

[Paul M]

Oh no, it would appear it didn't work, after it apparently not restarting i came back to my laptop to say thank you before coming back to a blue screen. I restarted it and the same thing is happening but this time it didn't restart it gave me a blue screen with some information... "Windows had to shutdown to prevent damage", "Remove all new hardware and software", "some memory address", "Talk to the administrator if this persists"....

Not sure whats going on it recommended going into safe mode somewhere in the weird essay style warning but eh didn't really say what to look for -.-

[Paul M]

Im in Safe Mode now and i am not sure what i should be looking for. Just so you know there is no hardware or software that has been installed recently that would of coursed this problem.

[Nightwalker83]

You may have a boot virus or malware! Download a malware/virus scanner on another pc then run them on the infected pc.

[Paul M]

I have already scanned it numerous times there were problems but nothing major and all of them were removed it still happens though.

[Nightwalker83]

Are your fan and power supply functioning correctly?

[JuggaloBrotha]

If it's a home built comp that's been OC'd a little it could be resetting cause the cpu/one or more of the cores is running hot.

My desktop at home has that problem, I'm still trying to find the right combination of voltage and cooling for the primary core because it's running 5 degrees too hot when idling and rebooting itself because of it. I've also got my gpu running a little on the hot side too, that could be the problem too

[Lord Orwell]

if it's working in safe mode, it's a driver problem. Check to see if you have any available system restore points you can roll back to.

and the fact you were seeing a bsod now and not before is because you unchecked the automatic restarts. I had you uncheck it so you could post in the forum what it said. You need to post EXACTLY what it said. Tell us if it for example mentioned a filename or gave a specific error message. also you should run memtest86 and see if you have any memory issues.

[xera]

Are your fan and power supply functioning correctly?

If you're not getting BSOD, then your power supply could be faulty.

I had an old pc that would randomly restart; I asked everybody, and somebody told me it could be the power supply.
I replaced it, and voilà. No more random restarts.

[Lord Orwell]

If you're not getting BSOD, then your power supply could be faulty.

I had an old pc that would randomly restart; I asked everybody, and somebody told me it could be the power supply.
I replaced it, and voilà. No more random restarts.

that usually (not always) gives other symptoms such as drives powering up and down. The biggest teller in my experience of a failing power supply is going to the windows "shutdown" and choosing "reboot". For what ever reason, it won't repost and doesn't reboot. You end up having to power down.