The Computer is restarting without any reason

[vsenapati]

My friend Manoj Kumar has an Assembled Desktop of the following specs:
Celeron 633 Mhz
Mercury 810e mainboard
128MB SDRAM PC133
40 GB Seagate 5400rpm Harddisk
Onboard Video and audio
Samsung CD-rom 52x
1.44 FDD
OS Win XP Pro

Recently, I formatted the Harddisk(C and installed fresh copy of Win XP Pro as it was infected with viruses and they could not be removed by NAV2003. There was no problem in installation but now the PC restarts without any obvious reason. There is no virus in the C: as I haven't connected with the internet yet. Further, I have scanned the Harddisk thoroughly using NAV2003 and Symantec FixBlast( exclusive scan for MS Blaster.exe ).
I have not been able to find out the reason of restarting. Any advice ?

[RabidDog]

reseat all components including CPU and test out all cables and power leads.........try booting and running for some time with a dos boot disk just in case the system is overheating... leave it running with just screensaver and music mp3's playing for 25 hours.
Then pray to Shiva-Nataraja...

[dunamis]

I had this problem with a couple of computers in our office. We eventually found out that the UPS units were causing the problem. For some reason they did not have quite enough current capability and caused the computers to reboot. We replaced the units with larger ones and the problem was solved. If you are currently using a UPS unit I suggest you plug your computer directly ito the AC power supply for a while and see if it still continues to reboot itself. I hope this is helpful to you.

[Will Hay]

I had this problem a while back, turned out to be faulty memeory.
Check out this post here, has a million and one suggestions as to the cause.
Good luck
Will

[IvIark]

When you say you haven't connected to the internet yet, are you physically connected i.e plugged into broadband or similar? I did exactly the same thing as you and got a virus before I'd setup my internet connection, simply because the physical connection was there and as my copy of XP didn't have the latest service pack, it left my PC vulnerable.

Are you getting a message saying something like "The PC will shut down in 30 seconds"? If you are, you can disable the shutdown by going to START / RUN and typing "shutdown -a". You then need to update with the XP service pack to sort out your PCs vulnerabilities.

Mark

[luvvbuzz]

i also had this problem once after a fresh install of win xp pro after i had installed my drivers and then installed my capture card, the machine would boot to the desktop then shut down, so i could not do anything with it. in the end i just installed win me again and it was ok. it may be like iviark says, you may need to install services packs.

[mickle]

Agreeing with Will, I had the same problem which turned out to be a faulty memory.

Mike

[vsenapati]

There are two DIMM Slots in the mainboard. I removed the 128MB SDRAM stick from one slot and fixed it in the empty one. The restarting problem seemed to have been solved. The Desktop is not restarting again but I still don't know the actual reason why it was happening. Well, before installation of fresh Win XP pro I had changed the position of the memory stick. Now, it is back in its original slot. NO more restarting!

[tgpo]

Are you getting a message saying something like "The PC will shut down in 30 seconds"? If you are, you can disable the shutdown by going to START / RUN and typing "shutdown -a". You then need to update with the XP service pack to sort out your PCs

My girlfriend's computer is doing that, but it only happens when they are online. Will running that commads possibly fix her problem as well?

[IvIark]

My girlfriend's computer is doing that, but it only happens when they are online. Will running that commads possibly fix her problem as well?

That definitely sounds like the virus as it will shutdown when you try to go online in an attempt to stop the user downloading the appropriate security fix. Next time it comes up, just type in the "shutdown -a" command to cancel it and then download the XP security patch from Microsoft. You will also want to download one of the standalone virus removal utilities like the one on the Symantec website:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.removal.tool.html

There are a lot of variations on the LOVSAN virus now but the Symantec one cleared mine.

Mark