My computer shuts down randomly. Any advice?

[jo4re]

Hi All,
MY Dad's computer shuts down after about an hour or so of being turned on. THe temps of the Athlon 2000 are 44C according to Asus Probe. Can anyone think of any reasons for this and how I can go about fixing it?
Thanks,
Joe

 

[suicidalpigeon]

are you running heavy applications like games and such? the power supply may be starting to fluctuate. software like those are innacurate to tell anything since the true temp could be off by up to +/- 10 degrees celsius. whats the specs of this system?

 

[jo4re]

It can just be idle and still shut off. It can stay on 1hr or 8hrs, it varies. It's kind of strange.

It's an Athlon XP 2000, 512MB Ram, Asus A7V333 Mobo, WD HD and I believe a Radeaon 9800pro GPU.

Thanks!
Joe

 

[python023]

What brand/watts on your Power Supply?
Did you do Virus Scan?

 

[jo4re]

Not too sure. I think it's a 400W PS though.

 

[0roo0roo]

you mean a "400watt" psu

 

[GuitarDaddy]

First guess would be Power Supply! When it shuts off, doe's it reboot or just power down.?

 

[jo4re]

It doesn't reboot. It just shuts down. IN order to restart it he needs to unplug the power then the power button will work.

 

[Cooler]

The computer cannot do anything "random".

 

[volrath]

Power supply.

 

[jo4re]

Thanks! Is there a way to test it to know for sure?

 

[python023]

Using a program like Everest you can check your voltage rails to make sure your getting proper volts.
You could test a quality PSU in there instead to see how that works.

 

[ShadowBlade]

Do you get a BSOD (blue screen of death) before it shuts down, or does the screen just go black?

 

[jo4re]

goes black then shuts down.

 

[thescreensavers]

Did you have a surg Protecter connected to this computer? I think its A PSU problem as well.

 

[Jotho]

A similar problem I had was remedied by a new PSU. With my old SmartPower, sometimes I could play games for an hour, sometimes I couldn't even boot Windows. It turned out to be a faulty power supply.

 

[alexthewolfe]

It is either your psu or your memory, go to your bios and run memtest if you have it, if not put it on a floppy on another pc and run it that way. If you get a bunch of errors it might just be that.

 

[wchou]

your power supply maybe all stuffed with dirts, clean it with a vacuum and you'll be fine.

 

[diapickle]

99% Power Supply

 

[FeuerFrei]

Originally posted by: jo4re
It doesn't reboot. It just shuts down. IN order to restart it he needs to unplug the power then the power button will work.

This is exactly my problem.
I just installed a new CPU, mobo, RAM, HD and XP.
I get random shutdowns when the computer decides it wants to turn off. It even did this at times with my old mobo/CPU setup.

I'm running a SmartPower as well.

I'm wondering if it's a power supply problem or the fact that it's plugged into an ungrounded 2 pin wall outlet.