Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

Computer acting up... Need help please.?

My computer has decided to continuously restart itself... I am very computer savy and in fact built this computer.

Heres the deal:

AMD Athlon 1.8ghz

Windows XP Pro

1.5gig DDR400 memory

Asus K8N Motherboard

ATI Radeon X1650 512mb Video

350 watt power supply

Case fan, Video card fan, custom (higher rpm) power supply fan

About a month or so ago it started just rebooting. At random times. I replaced the hard drive and reinstalled windows. Still rebooted... So, I reformatted the HD and reinstalled everything from scratch. Was good for about 3 weeks and today it has started restarting again.

Any ideas?

Update:

Overheating was my first thought too. But I have thermometers on my CPU, Motherboard and RPM monitors on all my fans and they seem to be OK.

One thing I am seeing is my voltage sometimes drops from 12v into the 10.5 - 10.1 range...

My only hold up on replacing the power supply is that once the computer restarts and I get back to my desktop I get the "Windows has recoverd from a serious error" error message... leading me to think it is a software issue not hardware. Would I get a windows system error message upon restart if it is a hardware issue???

I am really stumped

5 Answers

Relevance
  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    It may be a fatal error that is causing the computer to restart. You can easily stop the restart problem by changing your system

    features to restrict automatic startup when your computer's having a problem. Here is how:

    Use System Failure Settings to Stop Automatic Restarts.

    1. Click Start and Open the Control Panel

    2. Go to System and Maintenance, Click on System.

    3. Select Advanced System Settings and choose Advance tab.

    4. Under Startup and Recovery, click on Settings.

    5. Under System failure uncheck Automatically restart.

    Hope this helps!

    http://www.delete-computer-history.com/windows-res...

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    It's either overheating or you have a faulty powersupply. I'd recommend downloading speedfan and seeing what the results are - http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

    If they are high - clean out the case and possibly look into more cooling methods, although if they are average then you're going to need to replace your PSU.

    Hope this helps!

  • Aleks
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago

    Sounds like overheating but can be bad blocks on the harddrive or faulty power supply.

    BTW check out this PSU: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=FL-550ATX-...

    The regular price is around $150

  • 1 decade ago

    Maybe the power supply? Could be faulty. How much power is needed with all that?

  • How do you think about the answers? You can sign in to vote the answer.
  • 1 decade ago

    overheating

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.