Desktop shuts off......alot

[jmc]

So my brother has been having issues with his desktop, and I finally got around to looking at it.

The issue is, it shuts off whenever it wants to...... Could be 30 minutes after turning it on, or turn off after playing WoW for 4 hours.

I originally thought it was due to his video card replacement, which is a geforce 7900. Swapped out to a comfirmed working video card and I have the same issue.

I then thought it was overheating, as sometimes after it shut off, I would try to turn it back on for the desktop to only shut itself off right away. However, the desktop seems to be running cool.

I then thought windows was causing serious errors, and instead of blue screening... was shutting itself down. I installed a fresh copy of windows xp on it, and keep getting same result.


so.......... i'm out of ideas. I was going to go get a new PSU, but with the computer turning off whenever it wants no matter what is being done on the computer makes me believe its not the issue.

Anywhere else I should look for issues?

[Murdock]

i have the same issue. I have no idea what is causing it, but it sounds like a power serge when mine shuts off. like a electric pop noise. im just dealing with it till i buy a new pc. Strangely enough, it only seems it happen when im using it. When i leave it on durring the day its fine.

[Francisco]

Check to make sure the heatsinks are all secure and in place.

I had this happen to me a couple of years ago, and what happened is the heatsink had fallen llose from the CPU chip.

[Khajit]

Same problem for me on my laptop without any weird noises and alot less often since i would measure mine in days instead of hours .
The CPU just shuts itself off instantly then works fine after i start it up again although I've taken to letting it cool down for a few minutes lately since i thought it was cooling too.

[Pharaun]

My desktop was having the same problem, turns out it was a bad power supply.

[jmc]

hmm... guess I will swap out the power supply sometime this weekend and see how it goes.

thanks

[Isiolia]

I had an issue along those lines that was a wireless driver. It'd usually wind up crashing the machine after only 15-20 minutes, though sometimes it lasted longer.

Did you have no issues with it until certain devices were added after installing Windows? Try running it off a bootable Linux disc for a while?

[fishstix]

I had this issue before with the computer randomly turning off, ended up being a bad motherboard. Also while it may -seem- to run cool, get a monitoring program just to be sure.

[Furtwangler]

the easiest thing to do before replacing any parts is run memtest, may shed some light and then you will have it ruled down to the PSU or mobo being bad.

[Norellicus]

It's also possible heating problems, most computers now have a killswitch built in that shuts the machine off when a certain core temp is reached to prevent permanent damage and/or fires.

Edit: lol already been said like half a dozen times, I fail at reading

[Senoska]

I had this problem about 2 weeks ago. I took my fan off my heatsink and found about half an inch of dust packed under it. Removed all the dust off & in the heat sink, unplugged and cleaned the fan with a very lightly dampened cloth, let dry, plugged back in and everything works fine.

My problem was almost EXACTLY the same as the OP. I even swapped out the video card thinking that may have been the problem. It got to the point where I couldn't play flash videos or anything without the computer overheating. There was no signs of overheating either, my bios told me my PC was running around 70c which isn't all that bad.

[Mayareira]

Sounds like a poor PSU really. I've had a similar issue happened a while ago.

Again, there was no signs of overheating but the computer kept shutting off randomly. Later on, PSU started making a nasty burning smell, I thought it was the dust getting fried, cleaned the dust and no good.

I went ahead and replaced the PSU, I don't know what exactly was wrong with it but that solved the issue.
Most common causes of random shut off's are PSU/overheat related problems.