Computer randomly restarting... problem?

[jdd2007]

Im on a different computer now.

[jdd2007]

wont even stay on long enough to complete a virus scan...

[monkspider]

Are you using XP I assume?

[jdd2007]

yes. how did you know?

[BustaMike]

Could be overheating. That tends to make computers restart randomly as the CPU will shut itself off when it gets too hot on most boards.

[Asher]

Upgrade your motherboard, video card, sound card, network card drivers.
Update your BIOS.

If it still persists, some of your hardware is most likely FUBARed.
(or you need better cooling)

I bet you have an Athlon?

[jdd2007]

thanks BM. is there any solution other than Ashers?

[monkspider]

jdd- it could be a problem with XP. Ever since I put XP on here my computer woulld sometimes just randomly reboot as well, though not to the extent that is happening to you. This of course never happened with any of my other OSs on this same computer. I can only assume it is a flaw intrinsic to XP.

[Asher]

That would be a most likely incorrect assumption.

If Windows XP itself crashes, it BSODs, not reboot.

Reboots are caused by drivers that go bad (or overheating). The reason why you probably never experienced it before was because your Win9x drivers are completely different than Win2K/XP drivers, and a lot of companies still have pathetic 2K/XP drivers.

[monkspider]

That could be possible for some people Ash. I like to keep my drivers up to date though, so I have always tended to favor a school of thought which placed the blame squarely on a design flaw within and intrinsic to XP. The rebooting for me isn't so bad, so to XP's credit I have never had the inspiration to format.

[Asher]

Back in the summer we had one computer that would reboot whenever we logged out (but not shutdown).

The problem was ATI's Radeon 7xxx drivers weren't behaving properly, causing the reboots.

[Zopperoni]

D'euhm...IIRC, under Start --> Settings --> Control Panel --> System --> [tab]Advanced --> Startup and Recovery Settings, the box for "Automatically Restart" under "System Failure" is ticked by default, so the system will restart whenever something goes terribly wrong without any notice.
If you untick it, you might get a nice BSOD with perhaps some more information on the cause of the "spontaneous restarts".

[Urban Ranger]

Sounds like a heat problem. Check your CPU fan to see if it works properly. Reseat the cooler. If problem persists, apply a thin layer of thermal grease between the cooler and the CPU.

[jdd2007]

will do.