I've been having unexpected restarts for months now, but it's getting quite annoying so I thought I should do something about it.
A lot of the time it happens when I'm not there, I'll just return to my computer, enter my password and find that it's restarted while I've been gone. I've been unable to pin down a condition which starts it, I've gone weeks without it happening, but sometimes it happens multiple times during one day. It's happened while I've been gaming, but it mainly happens when I'm just browsing the Internet.
What often happens is a series of errors. I'll be browsing and try to open a different window, but nothing happens, the whole taskbar doesn't work. Then the window style may change (going non-transparant). Then I'll get some errors, often something along the lines of "failed to access memory location 0000FFFFFF" or something along those lines. I can normally still use my open window at this point. Shortly after that message, my active window will freeze and after a few seconds it restarts, this whole thing usually lasts about 2 mins. When it restarts, it is sudden. And for a split second, the display turns to a load of small horizontal lines of different colours.
When it starts up again, it doesn't seem to get past the motherboard screen, the whole "Press F12 to enter BIOS" and the other options. Perhaps if I waited it will eventually boot, as that would explain how when it happens while I'm away, it is on the login screen when I return. Sometimes it changes the boot order in the BIOS when this happens and I return to find it's booted to my old hard drive which still has the remains of a Windows install sitting on it.
My guess is either RAM or SSD. Where should I go from here?
A lot of the time it happens when I'm not there, I'll just return to my computer, enter my password and find that it's restarted while I've been gone. I've been unable to pin down a condition which starts it, I've gone weeks without it happening, but sometimes it happens multiple times during one day. It's happened while I've been gaming, but it mainly happens when I'm just browsing the Internet.
What often happens is a series of errors. I'll be browsing and try to open a different window, but nothing happens, the whole taskbar doesn't work. Then the window style may change (going non-transparant). Then I'll get some errors, often something along the lines of "failed to access memory location 0000FFFFFF" or something along those lines. I can normally still use my open window at this point. Shortly after that message, my active window will freeze and after a few seconds it restarts, this whole thing usually lasts about 2 mins. When it restarts, it is sudden. And for a split second, the display turns to a load of small horizontal lines of different colours.
When it starts up again, it doesn't seem to get past the motherboard screen, the whole "Press F12 to enter BIOS" and the other options. Perhaps if I waited it will eventually boot, as that would explain how when it happens while I'm away, it is on the login screen when I return. Sometimes it changes the boot order in the BIOS when this happens and I return to find it's booted to my old hard drive which still has the remains of a Windows install sitting on it.
My guess is either RAM or SSD. Where should I go from here?
