I've got an older PC that restarts a few times a day. Took the side cover off and ran it like that for awhile after checking all the fans were working. It still does it. I know this is a PITA to diagnose as it can be software or hardware related. I'm thinking the PSU is crapping out though. Any utilities out there that will monitor the PSU voltage/wattage and write the data to a file? I guess it would have to sample data pretty frequently for me to tell so this is why I ask. Ideally it would sample every hundreth of a second or so for 10 seconds before it starts overwriting the same file. Any other suggestions besides replacing the PSU with another one? If I gotta spend money on it, I'll just buy a new one (PC). Edit: Forgot to mention, hardware hasn't changed in 1-2 years. Also I did a 6 hour long cleaning session removing adware/spyware and some 30 or so programs followed using CCleaner and also revoved invalid registry entries after reboot. Seemed to run fine after that for a few months (no restarts) so I don't think that is the problem? Maybe I should reformat and reinstall XP but I feel like the PSU is the issue and would like to check that first.
Random Rebooting could be caused by a lot of things, normally it depends on what your doing when it reboots. For example if your overwriting a file and it reboots then the problem may be related to your hard-drive. I would start by looking over the motherboard for capacitors which are leaking or puffed up. Capacitors are in a cylinder shape, normally black or navy blue which have a silver top. Just in case you don't know what they look like. Other things to test would be memory- run memtest (google it) Format/reinstall with latest drivers and motherboard bios.
You might consider SpeedFan also, to monitor the temps and fan speeds. SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer And hell, why not a Linux Live CD to eliminate it being the OS? Fire up Ubuntu and see if the system is stable with that.
Yet another step I would recommend would be to turn off auto-restart on crash. That way if you're getting a BSOD you can see what it says. Also available in the event log as mentioned above.
goto bestbuy or a local pc shop and buy a cheap psu tester. its a good tool to have anyways. shouldnt cost but $5-10.. remove any uneccessary extra drives or expansion cards to free up power on the psu.. it could be getting old and not able to handle the minimal of power requirements if you have multiple sticks of ram, remove one.. test for a few days.. and do some swapping if it continues. could be a bad stick of ram. memtest, as also stated pull off the cpu fan and vacuum out the caked up dust thats lodged itself into the cpu heatsink. caked up dust acts more like an insulator and keep the heatsink from properly dissipating heat. inspect and observe the mobo for any cap leaking.. i know its not that old of a computer, but visual inspection is a good thing anyways. vid card should be inspected as well. make sure its fan is spinning, or if its onboard video, dont worry about it. if you do have onboard video but youre running a card, take the card out and run onboard for a while at least until you get the problem fixed. could also be a bad hdd, there for a while my computer was restarting by itself, i mightve mentioned it here a month ago. do a SMART test on it or replace it temporarily. I did what msp mentioned and found out the hdd was just failing and creating bad sectors on its own and deleting files for no reason. theres just too many factors, but those are the top priorities
Well took the tower into the shop and blew out the CPU heat-sink with shop air. Thing was caked with dust on top. Also blew out PSU and everything else. I'm running memtest86 on the Ubuntu live CD atm. Hasn't restarted yet. Edit: Memtest passed. Posting from ubuntu. will see what happens. So far looks like OS corruption to me. Ran windows for hours so it had to be that caked up heat sink on the CPU. Thanks for all the help.
you better test a while longer.. because as soon as you think its fixed.. *poof reset* gets me everytime.
