Computer is randomly rebooting while I'm not at it, and now the hard drive is erased.

[etalns]

For a while now my computer has been randomly rebooting while I'm not there. I checked all the power cords and made sure everything was plugged in correctly, and then I turned it back on, and the hard drive was erased.

No windows was on the hard drive, so I said okay I'll just reinstall windows.

So I am installing windows, it get ts to 50% or so then it gets an error and can't continue, must be a problem with the cd I think.

Get my dads windows xp cd, same problem. Tried another windows xp cd, and same thing.

Now I can't install windows, so I take out my hard drive and put it in my other computer, and the hard drives partition which had widows was all gone. But the partition with all my files/programs was still there.

Any ideas on what is wrong?

 

[etalns]

also, I got a hard drive out of my old computer and put it into the one that I'm having problems with, treied installing windows and the same problem. And I know the hard drive was working perfectly, as I was jus tusing it. Adn I know the CD's were fine

 

[Dark54555]

running any anti-virus?

 

[etalns]

yes, norton

 

[SaveYourself]

Could his power supply be going to dead-PSU-land? I read that failing power supplies can cause read errors on disks, and reboot madness, and other performance anomalies.

 

[Dark54555]

although I was originally thinking virus, I have read about problems like this from the power supply.