Random Reboots

[Godotology]

lately my desktop has been randomly rebooting by itself. in some cases it reboots, tries to load window and then reboots right after.

today was the worst as the blue screen of death popped up after attempting to load windows.. saying something about ACPI. It got to the point where I eventually could not even use the keyboard to go into my bios.

after letting the computer rest for a few minutes, opening it up and lying it on its side.. it some how worked and booted into windows. I did a format and reinstall of XP pro SP2 and reflashed the bios to a newer one.. and all seemed to go fine.. until it rebooted randomly again!

I highly doubt its a virus, and more to do with the hardware.

[Guest dabrain]

nah ... that aint a virus ...

i would first check ur power supply ... i guess the electric current is instable (<- electric current??? i dunno how to call it ... )

[Guest i'm lagging yo]

it could be a number of things... maybe a power supply issue. maybe it's getting too old for its own good. Or it could be that there's so much dust in and around the processor and RAM area so you should take your comp outside maybe a can of compressed air and do your worst. and also try to re-seat the connections to your motherboard and RAM sticks and all that.

[awdark]

Try memtest 86 to test your ram... do like 2 cycles.

Check the temps of your CPU... make sure they're okay.

But as both of them have said... its most likely your PSU. Old psus dont give as much juice... no juice = unstable.

[Godotology]

Try memtest 86 to test your ram... do like 2 cycles.

Check the temps of your CPU... make sure they're okay.

But as both of them have said... its most likely your PSU. Old psus dont give as much juice... no juice = unstable.

i ran a windows version of memtest, 0 errors. CPU is about 44c, so it doesn't seem too bad.

so far today, no problems... so given the random nature of what happens, its hard to gauge what the problem is and if an attempted solution changed anything.

the last time something like this happened was a lil over a week ago, and before that.. 3-4 months ago.

[Guest erniehkwon]

Dust or power problems? Open your case and clean out the dust balls for a start.

[awdark]

Dust problem.. will be represented in the temperatures.

So its not a dust problem.. his temperatures look fine.

I would point to a power problem or capacitor issue... any look funny? =P