For some reason my computer keeps restarting... It only seems to happen when its actives, especially when I'm playing games or watching movies. It may be the PSU or Mobo, but I'm not sure how to check if it is. Unfortunately I don't have a second computer that I can test the PSU/Mobo with Any suggestions would be good
I got a P4 2.0, MSI mobo (not sure about chipset and such) a geforce 4 ti 4200, 80gig maxtor HD, 20gig Maxtor HD, Sony DVD-ROM, Lite-on CD-RW, sound card, and a 300 watt PSU. been running it for more than a year never had any hardware problems (well except when the fan on my VGA card went out, but I got it working again cuz the wire got losened)
wow - that’s a tough one. It sounds like it is performance related though if it is more common when tasked heavily. So it could be a bad (unstable) memory region or the like. Maybe something is just loose though - or your power is dirty (esp if your PSU is going bad). I would ask you though - have you moved it or upgraded anything recently? If you haven't changed anything at all (including moving it) in conjunction with this problem starting - I would suspect the PSU first. I would unplug absolutely everything you can (to get power consumption down) and see if it happens less often. (well optimally you would test the voltages on your PSU and see how they were holding up.) If you have moved it recently or upgraded the HW with something new, I would go through and reseat absolutely everything. Also look for dirty or corroded contacts (are you near the ocean), things like that.
yeah, if its a generic 300W PSU its prolly just getting tired. Has a friend got a more powerful one they can lend you for a day?
we had this exact same problem with my friends comp, about a year after he got it it started to shut off during cpu intense activities, i did all the checks and even replaced the psu, it turned out that his heatsink had become clogged and the thermal paste was garbage, so check ur sys. temps before nething
hmm I made sure all the cables and such were connected securely, and so far no restart... its been quite a few hours so I think the problem is fixed since it was restarting usually at least once per hour I'll be sure to run it for a few days and make sure, but god I hope its fixed
If it's not, run this. It's a memory testing program, and will help you eliminate that as a possible factor. I just put a computer together that was restarting relentlessly, and the problem was the ram.
