Baffled by pc need help?

oops · 8 May 2012 at 13:42

Hi all, my daughters pc has started to reboot all by itself, sometimes it shuts down and sometimes it reboots, I have reinstalled the OS (windows vista basic) but no difference and also swapped out the hard drive but again still it happened. I’m thinking of swapping out the PSU or the memory.
But I must say I’m stumped.

Could it be the CPU?

Simon D · 8 May 2012 at 13:59

oops said:
Hi all, my daughters pc has started to reboot all by itself, sometimes it shuts down and sometimes it reboots, I have reinstalled the OS (windows vista basic) but no difference and also swapped out the hard drive but again still it happened. I’m thinking of swapping out the PSU or the memory.
But I must say I’m stumped.

Could it be the CPU?

Yes it could be the CPU.

Few things I do first have you checked that the CPU cooler fan is working OK and I would check the memory first with a software tester.

Check temps of the systems, remove any overclock.

If you need to check temps you can use HW monitor

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

More details here about memory testing.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/memorytest.htm

Remove any USB cables and devices from the PC as well.

It could be the PSU one of the rails may have gone bad do you have a spare to check?

JJimmyJ · 8 May 2012 at 14:01

Hello

Could also possibly be a hard-drive issue? May be worth running a checkdisk to see if there's any corruption on the drive.
How old is the PC?

Edit = Ignore - I need to learn to read, I see you already tried different drives.

linwelin · 8 May 2012 at 15:23

Could be anything really memory PSU CPU test what you can, take out all your memory use only one stick and see what happens, i like to check through event viewer and see if there is any problems being reported in that too.

triggerthat · 8 May 2012 at 15:41

Sounds like the PSU. Check that first.

PaulyD · 8 May 2012 at 18:46

Sounds like PSU to me too. Had one that did the same (shutdown randomly) before finally going pop.

Curio · 8 May 2012 at 19:05

Random shutdowns are nearly always PSU. Could be RAM, but that will usually cause blue screens as well. I would first check everything inside is firmly plugged in, nothing touching the mobo, etc.....then turn your attention to the PSU.