General Causes for Computer Restarting??

[xtreme404]

Hey guys, I was just wondering if there were any general causes for a computer restarting itself?? I was wondering if it could be the Power Supply or possibly motherboard. Just wondering the best way to narrow it down!!

Thanks!

 

[jhl3]

Good to know it's not just an Intel prob. I'm subscribing to this thread.

 

[PAWO]

The only time I have had a problem with that happening was when I had an older (and very overloaded) generic powersupply in my current Rig. *it was runnin' on a 200watt* Then I got a 350 watt enermax, and it has never done it again. It can also be caused by faulty ram, or even the motherboard. Any number of things, ram and power supply seem to be most common/only I've ever seen so far.

 

[Steve978]

Its a pretty common problem, I've had this caused by the motherboard, power supply, RAM, and video card. Just try to isolate it by removing non-esential parts, then individually try the different parts by swapping them out for others.

 

[WyrmMaster]

spontaneous reboots are GENERALLY a powersupply issue. Not always, but that is the first thing i would check.

 

[AlucardCasull]

it could also be just plain old overheating.

 

[PingSpike]

I've had it happen fairly often because of overheating. Had an old PC with only the PSU fan for exhaust and that failed. PC would overheat and shutdown restart.

Other than that, the most likely causes are PSU and motherboard in my opinion. I haven't had bad ram cause reboots, just all kinds of crazy stuff. Apparently burst capacitors are becoming a more common problem, we have some IBMs that this happens too. Its a known problem of these machines, but IBM basicaly said "Warrenty is expired, screw off" to me when I called them on it. The capacitors swell and crack, then the system reboots randomly. Often it can't even load the OS.

 

[wanna_b_rich_13]

It could be a virus too.

 

[wpmegee]

The ram could also be faulty. I had an AMD Rig, running a 2000 with Asus mobo, 256mb PC2100 that was spontaneously rebooting (even in bios !!!) and giving me BSODs. Swapped out the ram stick, no more problems. The ram worked fine 6 months ago when first built, just now started acting up.

 

[Loud]

It could be a virus too.

Good point. This could be one symptom of the Blaster worm. Ugh.

In my limited experience, this problem has always been PSU related. An overloaded PSU will do this, certainly.

But ... I have also learned (the hard way) that dirty (AC) power makes life hard for a PSU, eventually killing it. So it may be a bad PSU even if it seems at first blush to be large enough for the box.