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Why does my computer keep restarting?

Posted By : Henry of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on December 5, 2004

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Computer has worked fine for the year or so that I have used it from new. It has just started restarting without prompting for no apparent reason.

Firstly I noticed the problem when I 'right clicked' upon a name in the Outlook Express address book with the intention of sending that person an email. The computer restarted. After the restart I tried again and the same thing happened. Everything else appeared to work well.

Next time it restarted I tried to access outlook express and the machine restarted. Next time it restarted in the course of rebooting. Next time it restarted and I went straight to system respore and took the whole system back a month to an obviously OK time. Great, all worked well and then I tried to send someone an email by clicking on to a name in the address book. Resart! It is worth noting that I do not go to dodgy web sites or have emails from suspect places, - all very boring and legitimate.

Next time I ran a full virus scan with Norton (full firewall and anitivirus fitted) and it came up clear. Next I ran spy-bot and adaware and again came up clear.

The only thing that I can think of is that the problem started after the machine automatically tried to get an upgrade from the microsoft site but failed because for reasons that I won't bore you with, microsoft think (incorrectly) that this machine does not have a correct licence. Could microsoft have put some sort opf poison pill into the system or am I just paranoid?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Paul Daniel

This question was answered on December 5, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


Make sure all your drivers are up to date Especially your chipset and video drivers.

The first thing to do is to stop reboot on error To do this do the following;

Right-click My Computer and click on Properties

Click the Advanced tab

Click the 'Settings' Button in the 'Startup and Recovery' section

Under the 'System failure' section uncheck 'Automatically restart' and check 'Write an event to the system log' box

The next time the system fails have a look in the Event log for any problems to pinpoint the cause

If you see a box that mentions that the system will close down and reboot because of a system or RPC error, or similar wording, you probably have the blaster infection, check with any AV site for instructions on removal and to protect from future infections "

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Posted by Henry of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on December 5, 2004

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