Xp Pro, AMD dual Core, GeForce 8500, Gigabyte mobo. Computer will be
running just fine, voltages are ok, temps at 33 or 34 degrees C, and
computer just shuts off. No BSOD, no warnings, nothing. It restarts
and sometimes I have to restart again to get USB's to work. The only
thing I can find is in the event viewer it is security center event
1800. Which I can't find anything for. Its time correspond to the
shutdown times. Antivirus is upto date, windows firewall on, spybot
upto date. Any thoughts?
I had the same problem long ago and unfortunately the record is well
buried in my archives and won't show up for me right now. As a result I
don't have any "why", if I ever did, but I do recall monitoring power
supply voltages, checking all the connectors, etc. etc., and then
booting from my XP CD, at which time the problem went away; no more
spontaneous shut downs without warnings. I used the repair console to
start a program so I could tell if it rebooted, and let it run over
night. It didn't do the spontaneous restarts that way! So that made me
think maybe software instead of hardware. Had it rebooted again I would
have started to look seriously at the power supply and cleaning inside
the chassis of dust, reseating connectors, etc. more thoroughly, but it
never rebooted spontaneously.
IIRC I never found the cause; I ended up doing a clean reinstall of
XP and rebuilding everything. I specifically didn't restore from
backups because it seemed likely doing so might bring the problem back
with it, IF it was really a software issue as it seemed to be. Seems
like I tried System Restores and maybe Norton's GoBack to no avail. I
don't think I ever lost any data, interestingly enough.
In my case I think everything worked, including USBs when it came
back, and there was a blue screen about a hardware failure/shut down to
protect something or other. There wasn't any pattern to when it would
happen that i ever found but it would almost always occur within any 4
hour period one or more times.
And, it hasn't happened since, even thru losing the cpu fan awhile back.
In that case it had gotten noisy, so ... I heard it "not running" before
it overheated.
So, maybe booting from a CD and seeing if the spontaneous restart
happens that way, without having accessed your boot drive would tell you
whether it's software or not too. Takes a long time, but better than
fiddling hardware when it wasn't hardware, which is how it turned out
that time at least.
XP's error messages are often a little obtuse so the point of it
telling me about a hardware failure didn't tell me whether the hardware
failed or something was done to it that caused it to shut off, so ... .
I always try to verify any XP messages if it's at all possible.
I am NOT saying it's not hardware; only that it's possible for
software/glitches/corruption, whatever, to cause the very same symptoms.
HTH
Twayne
