Please Help

[Joeberg]

Hello Everyone,

I'm running one of my machines (500Mhz Celeron, 3.2GB WD HDD, 256MB RAM) and I have XP Pro installed. Every so often (Every Hour or so) The computer will reboot, for no apparent reason, cause me to Abruptly lose anything I was doing and/or lose Some of my User Settings are gone, including the way I have my Start Menu arranged, etc. If anyone knows how to fix this problem, It would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Joe

[ktkendall]

Could be several different thing causing this, Heat problem, Power Supply fault, Memory defective, Virus, and some others. The first place that may give a clue is the event viewer in XP:: Found thru ControlPanel>AdministrativeTools>EventViewer> and then highlight system and you'll probably see a red error that coincides with everytime XP shuts and reboots.. It may or may not give s a clue but it's a place to start.. Double clicking the error give a bit of a description of the error which sometimes is good and sometimes would only mean something to a microsoft windows programmer. Also see if you can check the temps and voltages. If you don't have a program that came with the PC to do it thru windows, you should be able to go into the BIOS and check them. You'll want to run PC for a bit, then restart and go into the BIOS and see if there is a hardware monitoring page in there..

[Markoman01027]

Download a RAM tester from docmemory.com to test your RAM. Usually faulty RAM will cause the reboots. Another thing that can cause reboots is a poor PSU and overheating issues.

[Joeberg]

Thanks Ktkendall and Markoman01027,

The problem had been a heat related issue that I fixed with the installation of some fans. Thanks for your help
Joe