PC keeps restarting - why?

[steve04]

A relative with some computer knowledge recently built my son a PC. Problem is it keeps restarting - typically about 3 or 4 times an hour. All the components were new except for the processor, which is a 1.5 Ghz Pentium IIII

Has anyone come across this problem before? What's the likely cause?

Thx.

[steve04]

The OS is Windows XP

[mikedodson]

heat, heat and heat. Is the power supply fan running? is the processor fan running? Is the heat sink mounted properly? Does your bios monitor system heat, check it. A flakey motherboard or hard drive are possibleties but even there, over heating probably accounts for the cycling. Come to think of it, the last two times I had this sort of problem it was the hard drive. HDD Heatth (freeware) might help locate the problem if its the HD. I think there are some temperature monitoring programs out there but I don't know them by name.

 

On the chance it is the hard drive be very religous about back-ups. Right now I am paying more than the price of a new system to retrieve data from my sister's fried hard drive.

[londonles]

Hi

 

I agree if the processor is old the thermal paste may have dried out causing th cpu to over heat. suggest you re thermal the heatsink and blow all dust away and try again

 

Also this link to Major Geeks will allow you to download a small prog called motheboard monitor

 

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=311

 

les

[danzil]

does anything show up in event vewier that may help pin point the problem....before it restarts do you receive any blue screening how ever quick....when it has restarted is there any messages (your system has recovered from a fault)that message may be able to guide us through helping you more.