I've got a Dell Dimension 8300 running XP SP2.
The following bizarre symptom started happening intermittently recently,
and I don't understand why:
I choose "Turn off Computer" from the Start menu in the lower left
corner, and then I click on "Turn Off". It does its thing, kills the
various apps, gets ready to shutdown--but then it reboots instead!
Any ideas?
Hello Stephen,
Try this first:
Stop the computer from automatically restarting on a failure:
Right-click 'My Computer' and click on 'Properties'.
Click the 'Advanced' tab and in the 'Startup and Recovery' section,
click on 'Settings'.
In the 'System failure' section, check the boxes 'Write and event to
the system log' and 'Send an administrative alert',
but unckeck the box 'Automatically restart'.
This will cause the system to blue screen on critical errors.
When you get a blue screen, copy down what it says, especially any the
error code, specific error numbers, faulting files, etc.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Check the Event Viewer:
On restart:
Go to Start => Run and type in "eventvwr.msc" {without the quotes}
Maximize the window that opens.
In the 'Application' and 'System' sections double-click on any Errors
at about the time of the failure.
Click the small double-page button. This will copy the Error message
to the clipboard from where you can paste it into a post and/or into
Notepad.
Also, click the blue hyperlink which will take you to online Help &
Support where you may find some suggested solutions to the problem.
