What is causing my PC to reboot on it's own? (1 Viewer)

[Larry Seno Jr.]

Lately, when I run some programs my computer hard reboots.

Do we think it's possibly my RAM or could it be the hard drives? The hard drives come back fine from Scandisking them.

 

[Jay H]

New computer or old? If you just put it together, it could possibly be a short on the motherboard, or perhaps even a dying power supply. See if you can check your voltages (if you have a motherboard that supports it) for your +5v and +12v lines....

Jay

 

[Charles Bober]

Well Larry, I recently had the same problem from a brand new computer I built. Recently I wiped out my computer and re-installed the OS and all has been fixed so far. But I started a thread a while back that had many different suggestions: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...threadid=62034
Anyway, I can tell you that I suspected the memory eventhough the diagnostics I used showed no errors (although they are widely used, I've seen them be wrong on several occasions). Then there's the motherboard as is mentioned in the thread. Or it could be the installation of the mobo. And lastly, the power supply.
But as I stated above, I've had no issues since re-imaging my system. My registry obviously was screwed (I had some other problems as well) and a fresh OS coat may do the trick.
I hope that helps.

 

[Drew Wimmer]

Larry-
that could be any number of things, could you give us some more information? Like what programs cause it to crash, does it crash after runing the programs for a while or right away? how old is your PC? Is your PC inside a cabinet in your desk? What what are your system specs? all of that would be most useful

 

[Justin Lane]

I had a power supply that was failing that would cause my system to reboot at random. The actual culprit was the power supply fan which was dying. I spliced in a new fan and everything as been working fine since. Just something to check, though your problem could be a number of things.

J

 

[Jason Wilcox]

My computer would randomly reboot every so often and it turned out to be a bad surge protector.

 

[Dave_Olds]

Usually heat & power supplies are the most likely sources....Bad fans on the power supply, bad fans or improperly mounted fans/heatsinks can cause this. As well as overclocking past the point of stability.....

Anything that causes excess heat. I have seen instances where removing the cover of the PC and running it "exposed" would solve it - it is a fine way to see if heat is the culprit experimentally if nothing else...

Dave