Random PC Power Shutdown

[Wally's World]

Howdy!

This isn't CM related, but since I've gotten good advice here before I would post my problem here.

For the last three or so weeks, I've be getting random power shutdowns and reboots on my machine. No blue screens of death, just a quick power down and reboot. I can't seem to find any sort of pattern. I thought it might be an overheating problem, but the power downs sometime even occur during the initial boot and Windows load. It doesn't seem to matter what I'm doing on the PC at the time of the power shutdown. The PC will power down right away at bootup or run for hours at a time with no problems.

Someone told me that this sounds like a power unit problem. I have no idea what my power unit (about 1.5 years old) is since it came with the machine, so I assume it's some kind of a generic thing. I had changed my motherboard from an Asus A7V333 to a Epox 8RDA+ about three months ago, but this problem just cropped up about three weeks ago. My CPU is an Athlon 1800+. I do have both CPU fan and a case fan so I don't think it's a heat problem.

Please, any advice?

Many thanks for all replies!

[Kobal2]

Have you checked your comp for the Sasser virus ? Supposedly it shuts down/powers up your PC randomly.

I had that problem myself on three separate occurences.

First time was apparently related to overheating, as changing to video card (was one of those early Voodoo3 that you could cook eggs on) and applying a fresh coat of thermic paste on the proc did the trick. Besides, it would only reboot during games, web browsing, movies, music and word processor were all safe. Also, IIRC, half of the time it wouldn't reboot, but freezed the screen, so that may not be what you've got here.

Anyhow, you have a modern comp (1GHz+), and an Athlon to boot - these are known to be heat-heavy, so putting on some fresh thermic paste between proc and fan can never hurt (though you may want to get somebody who's already done that if you haven't, it can be tricky/messy at first).

Sometimes even heavy dust on the radiator can cause overheating (especially if your computer is "naked" (ie running without it's outer shell))

Second time was a fouled up RAM - but this one came with BSODs (at boot) sometimes. Apparently there was a physical part of the RAM that couldn't be written on, or maybe that would dump its data randomly, causing major havoc. Removed all RAM, then tried each one separately. Found the bugger, dumped it after cussing it blue - problem solved.

Third time was when my power unit was becoming a bit short to power the ever-increasing number of hard drives, plus the demanding video card, plus the proc, plus CD burner plus DVD...Changed from a 300W unit to a 500W, did the trick.