Topic: PC shutsdown and restarts

[bigguy]

When it restarts do you hear a click at all and then the hard drive starts to spin up. It's sort of hard to explain but you would be sitting there and all is fine and then all of a sudden you hear a click, then something doesn't sound right...all of a sudden the screen goes back and the computer reboots.

[Louie]

I had resets like that before also on XP Pro. Problem was some device drives not installed properly.

You could click on the System icon, select Hardware and go to Device Manager, take a look to see if any of the devices have a ! sign by them.

If you have any USB/Firewire devices plugged, unplug them from the PC ( other than mouse/keyboard ), unplug PC from wall, wait a few minutes and then repower and reboot. An external USB device could cause problems.

[demonrogue]

yeah something like that but i will need to sit and listen for that click otherwise its doing exactly as you described bigguy

To louie: i dont have any usb devices plugged in since i have only one usb port but appreciate your help though

[bigguy]

I'm thinking one of three things.....1.) your drive needs a firmware update. (which I doubt) 2.) it is overheating because of sitting in a spot in the case were it gets no ventilation.....3.) the drive has gone bad. Some things to check....Are both the power plug and the grey ribbon plugged in right to the hard drive and is the grey ribbon plugged in securely to the mother board. Is the drive sitting in the open or is it tucked away in a drive bay with wires crowding it. Can you do a scandisk and see what that yields please.

[demonrogue]

the power plug and the grey ribbon are plugged in securely to the drive and motherboard like its supposed and the harddrive is in the case sideways where the rear of the drive where you hook up the grey ribbon and power cord too is facing the removable side panel of the case. is the scandisk through the bios menu or through windows becuase if it is through windows i am not sure if my computer will stay on long enough for me to do it.

[bigguy]

What o/s are you using.

[demonrogue]

Windows Xp Home

[bigguy]

Go to My computer and then on "c" drive right click and go to properties....then to tools and you should see "error checking" click on it. check both boxes and start it. It should want to reboot to do the scan.

[demonrogue]

okay i get it done and one more thing bigguy after i turned on my computer after installing the new power supply and my windows os loaded to where i see all of my files on my desktop a box came saying the system has recovered from a severe error. I apologize if you already seen about this so i will get that scandisk done and reply here what it says

[Nesa]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427

the windows xp logs might tell you if any hardware is critically failing it will also show up the severe error. Look in the system log.

[demonrogue]

Okay i will check that thanks nesa and right now i am running scandisk for bigguy

[demonrogue]

sorry for the double post but i ran the tool to check the harddrive but i couldnt tell what i am to see and tell . But now i went and messed up the HDD now by updating drivers off of windows update and now a screen comes up asking to start windows normally or in one of the three safe modes however when none of the options work and so the computer just restarts for every option so tomorrow i am going to restore my hdd back to factory settings just so i can see if the computer just cuts off and restarts

[bigguy]

restart it in just plain old safe mode no network support or anything. When it reboots shut it down and then reboot.

EDIT: Never update drivers off of windows update site. You should, or I always try to go to the manufcturers websites for all drivers for hardware. What update did you install from windows update site, do you remember.

[demonrogue]

well thats the problem when i chose the first option which is just safemode the computer just reboots right back to the same screen with the choices. what i had downloaded was mostly drivers for dynex internet modem nividia and couple of others i cant remember right now.

[bigguy]

Do you have a spare drive you can use to check things out with.