System boots into windows, then suddenly reboots

khankhan New
edited October 2005 in Hardware
I was tasked with a Dell Dimension 4100 with a peculiar problem: it boots up fine, but then will sometimes, seemingly at random, power down. This is not a "windows is shutting down", just a sudden blackout. Sometimes it will power back on, sometimes not. This computer belongs to a teen girl, so is obviously spyware-wracked. I'm just trying to get the machine stable enough to do a reformat/reinstall.

Is it a bad power supply, like I think? Or could a windows issue be causing that?

Comments

  • gibbonslgibbonsl Grand Forks AFB
    edited October 2005
    might want to check to make sure all the connections on the PSU are tight

    other then that my thoughts are the PSU going bad also
  • SquillSquill Chesterfield, Va
    edited October 2005
    yeah check the power supply. Check to see if the power supply fan is spinning. If it isn't then it's probably overheating and causing the power supply to shut down.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited October 2005
    How often does it crap out on you? If it's really frequent you could try booting from a WinXP disc and running chkdsk or something. If it conks out doing that you can be pretty sure it's the PSU (or perhaps some other hardware), since Windows won't be a factor on a CD boot. The reason I ask if it's frequent is that if it only goofs up on you every couple of days it may be tough to troubleshoot.

    My dad's PSU croaked last winter. I originally thought he might have a cdrom drive, burner software, or windows problem. Every time he went to make a CD it would reboot. When it did it during an attempt to use the repair console I was pretty sure it wasn't a software thing.
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