Ok my pc has restarted itself 5 times in the last hour it is scaring me. I cant really afford to have any problems with it at the moment. So does anyone have any ideas as to what may cause this problem? If someone says hardware I'm going to break down and cry because I don't have the money for any new hardware at the moment.

 

Cheers for help.

Edited September 28, 200816 yr by chambersAUS

I've had a similar problem turned out to be the power supply in my case. Also my good friend Jeff had something akin to this as well and he took it back to the guys who built his PC 3 times to they finally accepted it was happening and he wasn't telling porky pies in his case it was a dodgey power supply cable. Although his wasn't frequent it would just happen unexpectedly and gave him the ****s.

Sounds silly, but check both ends of the power cable, it might be loose.

You'll need to talk in English so I can understand you.

 

"ne" is not a word I'm familiar with.

psu or over heating...

 

(it was the radnom restarts that got me Blacky..)

Edited September 28, 200816 yr by Gunner_downer

the government are spying on you and youre screwed .

There we go your post is at least in English sure its not grammatically correct but it will do. Aside from that and my previous post about it being your power supply I might suggest you pull your case apart and give it a good clean. I personally use my 20 horse power compressor to clean my pc but its not the best idea. There is plenty of ways to clean your case just remember to unplug the power from the wall and all components before you do anything and try to prevent any possibility of static electricity.

When you clean, don't use a vacuum cleaner as it creates static (forgot how it worked but just don't do it).

 

Also, a good measure to prevent static developing inside the case is to plug your power cable into an outlet (with the powerpoint switched off) and touch the case/psu now and then. The plugged in power cable acts as a ground for the static electricity to pass into.

 

With the random restarts, do you hear beeps? It may (as mentioned above) be related to overheating - common because Summer's approaching. Try leaving the side panel of your case open and have a desk fan blowing right into the case. Worked for me before I upgraded my case.

rhod when i was talking in TS yesterday my pc died and keeps restarting its self, 2seconds on then 2 off and keeps doing it over and over and over and doesnt stop. So i thought it was overheating, left it for 30min, try again, same thing. So i pulled it all down and cleaned the fan and heatsink out and tried again, same thing, checked cables to psu, same thing, so now im gonna try buy a new psu and hope that does it... looks like that time of year everyon has pwer supply ****tin em selves lol.. i hope its only the power since it shouldnt cost as much or take to long to get a new one, id hate to have a more serious problem. its not far off 2yrs old so its done well for hte amount of hardcore gaming ive been doing since i got it, so 1psu is no biggie i guess.. hopefully be back on arma soonn

Same thing happened to me, its a either a faulty PSU, or a problem with your motherboard. Mine was a failure in the motherboard, which caused everything else to bung up.

Is there by any chance a tiny stop error then it restarts, or it's just a straight off and then on? If there's a momentary stop error, it points to a host of possibilities, however if it just turns straight off it's either:

-Overheating

-PSU issue.

 

Both of their failsafes will shut the PC down with no warning from my experience, and generally they will present at similar times because the PSU will fail when you start to load the +12v rails and that's the same time that your components would be heating up. First and foremost, test with a spare PSU you have around [i realize not everyone has this luxuary but it's the easiest way] and if that doesn't stop the restarts, start individually stress testing the three big ones [GPU, then CPU, then RAM].

yeah just check all the basics as mentioned above, cable ect, try taking case off with fan, if it keeps happening get a new psu, you can get an 860 watt psu for 27$ at MSY

However I'd prefer a quality $100 500W PSU so that stuff like this doesn't happen as often

hmm, atm it seems pretty stable, but i will clean it all out and see where it goes from there.... i only replaced my PCU like 10 months ago .....

 

EDIT: also wat about viruses? ne chance? i tried to run a scan but it would get into it then restart -.-

In THAT case, it sounds like a heat issue.... I would defer to Psy, but it sounds like it restarts when under load, that points to heat for me. Just a thought.

ok an update... after a few hours since it had done it last it random restarted, so i turned it off, cleaned it out checked it all and from what i could tell (not alot tbh) was fine, i keep the side off and put a small fan facing it and blast it... i go to start it, and insted of booting up all the lights on the front just stayed on while on the screen was nothing but black cept in the top left corner was a flashing text curser thingo. i freak out and turn off, give it a few min then turn it back on.

 

it comes up with a black screen with all righting like F1 for continue and F2 for something else.... i go F1... it boots up normal and i get in... for around 10 min it was fine... then just now it crashed to a blue screen with all righting saying it turned itself off for major error and all that... i turn off and turn on... it goes to a black screen like the first but said something about the floppy drive falure (i dont have a floppy drive!) and had the F1 and F2 option.. i got F1 and now im here.... and im ****ing myself once more...

also if it helps i have a Dell Dimension 5150

install any software in the past few days, download anything ect

Ugh.... now there's the added unpredictability of 'has he stuffed one of the components up' by tinkering if you don't know what's going on. Not to mention the dell-desktop beasts which I prefer not to touch, I prefer DIY

 

Well blue screen is both a little more helpful, but also a bit of a PITA. Certainly more than half of the BSODs I have seen have been traced back to faulty memory or a bad overclock, but since the overclock doesn't appy, I'd look @ memory first. BSODs can come from a variety of components though, and even graphics drivers can cause BSODs (not entirely sure on that one though, don't quote me ).

 

It may well also be an ailing HDD, since it's coming up with a disk error of sorts. I might have misunderstood... if it's talking about the floppy drive, perhaps the BIOS has been inadvertently reset (unplugged and onboard battery shifted?) and thus it has reverted to defaults which generally has the floppy drive enabled, but you don't have one which could potentially be throwing you that error.

installed a webcam and downloaded a few songs and wat not.

 

i didnt actually "tinker" with any thing lol, i just pulled side off, cleaned best i could and made sure all the cables were firmly in place. i dont go near the memory, dont try to overclock it or any of that, the pc is around 3 years old so yer its been through a fair bit, but ive upgraded the PSU, added 2 more gigs of memory and upgraded to a 8500, and each time i got a pc techy to do it all.

 

i think ill be calling the techy in the morning i think

Edited September 28, 200816 yr by Loopener

give system restore a shot restore it to last week sometime

how do i do that?

also if it helps i have a Dell Dimension 5150

 

If it's having weird physical symptoms like locking at startup with a blank screen and all LEDs on then I'd say it's a hardware issue and not a software issue. PSU is always a likely candidate, though it could be just about anything - memory, CPU, mobo...

 

I think there's a bootable CD for memtest86 floating around the net... run that and see if you have any memory issues.

 

Also - historically (and this may or may not hold true for your particular model of computer) Dell like buggerising with standard component types by doing things like rewiring the ATX connector on power supplies so the wires are in a different order to the standard - replace any such components with extreme caution!

However I'd prefer a quality $100 500W PSU so that stuff like this doesn't happen as often

If someone says hardware I'm going to break down and cry because I don't have the money for any new hardware at the moment.

i've had the $27 for just over three months, no issues at all, even if i had to replace it with the same one every three months, it's still cheaper.

ahh well... i was thinking of doing a major upgrade (beef it up with a 9800, and another gig of ram) so may get a loan from the rents