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PC Restarts on its own

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K*B

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Posted February 2, 2013 at 1:00PM

Hello Tech Helproom friends. My PC running Win XP Home restarts by itself in the middle of use, sometimes very crucial use. I need to fix this immediately & I know you can help me do it. So, what's the fix? Thanks in advance. I await your response.

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K*B

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Posted February 11, 2013 at 11:16AM

Thanks guys. I'll try your suggestions and come back to you soonest.

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K*B

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Posted February 13, 2013 at 11:34AM

Friends, I took off the side as suggested. There was not much dust gathered inside the case. There was a fan mounted on top of the CPU and its fins. I removed/unscrewed the fan and vacuum cleaned it as well as the CPU with is fins. I vacuum cleaned the PSU and its fan blades etc. I also vacuum cleaned all of the inside and booted up to test. Unfortunately the same thing happened: the auto restart happened again. Thanks for your suggestions. Are there any more suggestions for me to try? Thanks in advance.

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Chronos the 2nd

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Posted February 13, 2013 at 11:55AM

A drastic action and not necessarily a solution but you could try a clean install of Windows But of course if your problem is hardware related then this action would solve nothing.

It could be that a component is failing and pinpointing the culprit will be tricky. But you could try running a couple of tests.

RAM/memory: Memtest. How to use. Here.

If you know what make your hard-drive is then you should find a tool here to test it.Or you can try HDTune.

Furmark will stress test your graphics card,but I don't think your problem is there.

OCCT will test your PSU among other components.

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted February 13, 2013 at 12:47PM

Just had same problem

tried substituting PSU was still same, turned out to be heat, cleaned heat sink and now OK.

As you have already done this I would suspect a failing PSU is most likely to be the problem

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K*B

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Posted February 13, 2013 at 1:53PM

Thanks friends, for further suggestions. I'll do all the suggested tests, Chronos the 2nd. Before I do I'd like a bit of explanation from you, Fruit Bat /\0/. How does a failing PSU cause a pc to reboot? I'm thinking that when a PSU fails the pc switches off, but should that PSU come back on again for some reason the pc is still off and would need to be physically rebooted to come back on. How does the rebooting happen, especially when I've unchecked "Reboot automatically? Just thinking aloud.

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted February 13, 2013 at 2:20PM

How exactly I don't know but have seen it happen many times.

PSU can cause different symptoms

Drop in voltage on the 12v or 5v power lines can cause HDDs to crash but you normally get an error message when this happens.

drop on the 3.5v line will cause mother board to switch off as soon as load is reduce PSU recovers so board picks up again.

Sometimes only enough power to run fans and LEDS not enough to get the BIOS or cpu up and running.

Mine was shutting off but would restart and run for a short time until I tried something heavy like imaging my hard drives, which was why I suspected PSU failing on 12v lines

after I changed PSU it kept shutting down and restarting for approx 1 second until I removed the "fur mat" from between the heatsink and fan,

I had been monitoring temps and they didn't seem to change after the clean but its fine now.

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K*B

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Posted February 13, 2013 at 2:42PM

Very good explanation, Fruit Bat /\0/. My pc reboots even when ildle. When it's just on and not in use it reboots. Does this give you any clues? By the way, how do I go about monitoring temperatures of the CPU and heatsink/fins? Thanks.

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted February 13, 2013 at 2:53PM

Now you have cleaned it out it won't be a heat problem Speedfan will monitor temperatures.

I really think your next job is to try another psu i am lucky I keep a spare from an old PC I scrapped so just unplugged the cables from the motherboard and drives and plugged the spare in to try.

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Fruit Bat /\0/\

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Posted February 13, 2013 at 2:55PM

PSUs are often one of the first things to go as some manufacturers skimp on the PSU to save money.

I assume the machine is 4 or more years old if running XP?

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woodchip

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Posted February 13, 2013 at 4:05PM

It could be Still Heat, the CPU if not fitted correct when new like thermal paste under heatsink may have dried out and may need new paste

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