Computer randomly shutting down

[Mourningshadow]

Ok a friend called me up and asked if I could help him with his computer, he says it would just shut down all of a sudden when he started up some games/programs and now he tells me that he can't even get it past the windows loading screen before it shuts down. I'm not sure what the problem is, he has an XP 2400+, Asus A7V8X Motherboard, and a Thermaltake volcano 9 in it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.



Aaron

 

[palcrypt]

some possibilities could include memory failure or his processor overheating cuz his fan isn't working. could be something else too. those two are what comes to mind.

 

[Mourningshadow]

yeah I was thinking maybe it had something to do with the fan not running right, he said something about it having 2 connectors and I noticed the volcano 9 has to be connected to a 12volt connection, not sure if the cpu fan slot is 12volts or not so will check that.

 

[Turkish]

probably overheating problems, same thing happened to me once, got a new heatsink and etc. and works fine now.

 

[geekender]

Can you boot and go into the bios long enough to get to the hardware monitor section and see what the CPU temp is?

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: geekender
Can you boot and go into the bios long enough to get to the hardware monitor section and see what the CPU temp is?

Yeah, what happens if you boot to a DOS bootable floppy? Does it spontaneously reboot also? If so, overheating of the CPU is what comes to mind. BTW, what version of Windows is this?

 

[Mourningshadow]

Well, I don't have the computer with me, I am going over there tomorrow so not sure if it will go into bios yet, I think it will, he just says when he gets to the wondows load screen it shuts off. It is running windows XP

 

[Mourningshadow]

another interesting thing he said was when he would restart his computer, ie after installing a program or something, instead of restarting it would just shut down and he would have to turn off the power toggle in back then restart it.

 

[frogg]

Tell him to disable the "Shutdown on CPU fan failure" option in the BIOS and see if the problem stops.

 

[jlr20]

I had the same problem with my XP2200. When playing a game the computer would just shut down. When i upgraded the Bios it fixed the problem.