A friend was also having probs. with her 'puter not shutting down correctly and also re-booting itself. Twice, to the PC repair shop she took it.

Though this doesn't sound like what was causing the prob. for your mom's 'puter, it might be helpful to others:

If using older version of Netscape, say version 7, bump it to 9; Netscape 7 is buggy and will cause machines to reboot (and not when wanted).

If a lot of probs. are occurring, and Service Pack 3 (SP3) has been installed on a maching with XP O/S, rollback or uninstall SP3; SP 3 has been causing a number of people probs.


On a machine that is starting funky or suspected of having something "hanging," another thing that might help is using the System Configuration Utility, and doing a diagnostic startup, as well as doing a selective Startup by enabling/disabling startup items.

The Utility can be located by using Run, then, msconfig under the Start menu and/or by going to the Start menu, then, Help & Support and typing: System Configuration Utility.