MY PC just restart by itself

gawddez

My computer just restart by itself. This problem doesnt happened all the time but has been going on for past 3 months. At first i thought its just the program that i was using but then it happened at any time when im in a middle of my work. Sometiems when i turn on the PC, XP loads up to my main screen and suddenly my screen went blank and the computer just reboot by itself. Is there any parts that starting to fail or symptoms of any problem? Sometimes microsoft would have this report stating my system crashed and they ask me to check the BIOS. What does BIOS do on the CPU?
:type:

CPU Type :Pentium 4 with 3.0GHz.
512MB
120GB HDD
CPU Clock : 1.70 GHz
Hard drive brand is Seagate Barracuda 7200.7
My power supply model is FSP200-60ATV
AC output : 100-127/220-230V~
DC output : 200W

zero-counter

There are a couple of things which could cause this problem. Intermittent reboots are hard to diagnose, unless the right questions are asked. First off, have you added any new hardware lately? Have you tweaked the BIOS settings in anyway, especially the Advanced Power Management? Are you overclocking? Can you enter safemode? I regarding the first question, I have worked on systems where people have exceeded the maximum power usage when adding a new peice of hardware. After upgrading the power supply, some issues were resolved. Others related, where shorts inside fo the case. Also, new hardware with corrupt drivers.

If you can boot into safemode, run the msconfig utility and select the diagnostic startup option under general. This will load only basic drivers and services. If you are able to boot normally, then you will have to find out which is the culprit by ruling out all possibilities. If you have determined which it is, then run selective startup, but enable the SOS option under the boot.ini tab, which will display the device drivers loading and you can see where it may fail, if it continues to do so.

You could also try a system restore approach, but I am willing to be that it might be a power issue. If not, then hardware related.

gawddez

I have not add any new hardware. This PC is still the same as it was a year ago. I am really beginner with troubleshooting so i never touch the bios settings. How do u enter safe mode?

So u suggest that i should upgrade my power supply?

zero.counter wrote:

There are a couple of things which could cause this problem. Intermittent reboots are hard to diagnose, unless the right questions are asked. First off, have you added any new hardware lately? Have you tweaked the BIOS settings in anyway, especially the Advanced Power Management? Are you overclocking? Can you enter safemode? I regarding the first question, I have worked on systems where people have exceeded the maximum power usage when adding a new peice of hardware. After upgrading the power supply, some issues were resolved. Others related, where shorts inside fo the case. Also, new hardware with corrupt drivers.

If you can boot into safemode, run the msconfig utility and select the diagnostic startup option under general. This will load only basic drivers and services. If you are able to boot normally, then you will have to find out which is the culprit by ruling out all possibilities. If you have determined which it is, then run selective startup, but enable the SOS option under the boot.ini tab, which will display the device drivers loading and you can see where it may fail, if it continues to do so.

You could also try a system restore approach, but I am willing to be that it might be a power issue. If not, then hardware related.

Armo

first thing you need to do is find out what the BSOD says, bu default xp is set to restart as soon as it senses a system failure, to make it display the BSOD

right click my computer->properties->advanced->startup and recovery settings->uncheck the automaticly restart on system failure

after you take the check out of this box, the computer will display the bsod leting you know where and what caused the system failure. The we can analyze the bsod