PC keeps randomly restarting

I have yet another problem with my computer. It is a desktop pc- windows xp, 3 ghz Pentium 4, 1.5 gb ddr ram, 160 gb hard drive, geforce 5200fx, 300 watt power supply.

My PC keeps on randomly restarting. There is no specific thing that triggers it. I’ll give you a timeline of events.

Around 5-6 months ago, my computer would sometimes restart in the middle of the night while I was sleeping, and when I came home later the next day in the evening, I’d find that my computer had restarted. This was pretty rare, however; it happened maybe once a week. Then, starting around 1-2 months ago, my computer would restart more frequently. I would be watching a video, and about 30 seconds to 1 minute after I opened the video, the computer would restart. Sometimes it would restart when I was just browsing the internet, or when I was doing nothing and no programs were open. One time, I put in a portable hard drive and started to transfer files to it, and the computer restarted 1 minute later. The portable hard drive connects with 2 usb ports. It never restarts when I put a flash drive in there and transfer files. Starting about 1 week ago, it hasn’t restarted. I have played video files, and it never restarted. I also recall that whenever there was a power outage and my computer shut off because of the power outage, when I turned it back on, it would restart while the black windows loading screen was showing. Then when it booted up for a second time, it didn’t restart. The same thing happened when I unplugged my pc and plugged everything back in and booted it up (I moved, so I had to set up my pc again).

Another thing worth mentioning- I thought it might have been my power supply, so I replaced my 300 watt power supply with a 250 watt power supply that I took out and haven’t used for about 3-4 years. When I booted up the computer and logged into windows, about 30 seconds to 1 minute later, the computer would restart.

What seems to be the problem and what can I do to fix it?

Thanks.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Your computer is fairly low in power requirements but even so are you sure that 300W is enough? USB devices can sometimes draw power from your PSU, it depends on what they are exactly how much they draw. If it actually runs two separate USB cables to the PC I'm thinking the second one is for additional power - I've seen that before... does it have a mains adapter?

Not enough power could easily cause all this. Having said that, I ran your specs as provided (with a few assumptions) through a PSU calculator, and you should be OK. I wrote these thoughts up before I thought to try that. It seems you should need about 250W depending on how old the PC is. As capacitors get older, they require more juice. It's worth considering, if you can't come up with any other solutions from the various other knowledgeable members here.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

If you want to see the error message and not let the computer automatically restart, do this:

Control Panel > System
Advanced tab
Startup and Recovery > Settings
Under System Failure, check everything except "Automatically restart".

Once this happens again, you'll just see a nice blue screen of doom, where a convenient error message is written. Google that stop error code (or post it here), and you can narrow down the possibilities.

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Doesn't the computer sometimes restart to prevent damage to the components? If I set it so that it won't restart during an error, could it potentially cause any problems?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I suppose that will be a risk you have to weigh against the benefits of troubleshooting the problem.

But don't get me wrong. Once you have the fatal blue screen, you cannot do anything but to restart. It's not as if you can just carry on doing any kind of damaging intensive task that you were doing before you were rudely interrupted.

If you strongly suspect the power supply, buy and install a 400W one before doing this. They aren't as pricey as other computer components.

______

Another reason for random restarting is if you have "Automatic Updates" enabled by default. Most of these updates will require system restarts. Microsoft pushes these patches out regularly on Patch Tuesday (second Tuesday of every month), as well as security updates for particularly nasty exploits.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Doesn't Automatic Update always give a five minute countdown timer before restarting your computer?

Any chance there's that old RPC Exploit that came out around 6-7 years ago where you're somehow not patched for it?

I'd guess that the 300W power supply isn't enough, though. Any friends you could grab a power supply off of?

Also, please let us know if this is a Dell PC. I don't know about other manufacturers, but Dell can use proprietary power supplies in their computers, and if try to hook up one made by someone else bad things can happen.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

It is an HP. It originally came with a 250 watt power supply. Unfortunately, it has very unique dimensions for the power supply, so the highest power supply I found was 300 watts.

FELIPE NO

RacinReaver, I've had automatic updates restart the computer on me while I sleep. Even when you think there might be something to prevent it (unsaved documents in Word, for example), Microsoft still forces a shutdown.

This stopped happening once I changed the option from "Automatic Updates" to "Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them."

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Zerg, I've had the same thing happen and it's because after a while of you not responding it'll bring up a prompt that says "Click to prevent Windows from restarting within the next ::countdown:: minutes." I think they do that for more vital updates as opposed to the typical weekly ones which just bring up that annoying DO YOU WANT TO RESTART NOW box every thirty seconds.

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