My PC keeps restarting itself
 

For the past week or so, my computer has been restarting itself at the most in-opportune moments....not that any moment is a good one when I didn't ask for the restart myself.

Sometimes it only gets as far as opening to my screensaver page. Sometimes I can be on a website for ages and all of a sudden the computer will shut down ... but automatically restart again.

Yesterday it was very difficult to restart, but eventually I got a screen up that said I had an error in the Directory file. It deleted files, then recovered orphan files. I have no idea what any of that means, I just know it sounds a bit sick.

I run IE and Firefox.

Does anyone know what might be the cause if it's something that's obvious to you, or does it sound terribly expensive? If it's the latter, then I guess my days on line are numbered!

Thank you in anticipation to anyone who might have an idea.

too many running programs. it takes up your free memory. basically your working memory.

can you tell me what all programs are running?

if you hit alt, ctrl then delete it will bring up your task manager. on the tabs , click programs.

most times programs are running in the background that you don't need. like quicktime or itunes.

let me know what you find.

:hug:

Right now it says.....

Immediately, I got this thread, HP Centre agent (my PC is HP) and Outlook Express which I do have open at the moment.

There wasn't an actual programs to click on, so I checked processes. There are heaps in there! I'd be too scared to close any down though as I have no idea what most of them are.

Don't you just love it when computers do this?
It sounds like it can't boot up successfully, so restarts to try again. Then, when going, it detects a problem and wants to correct it by rebooting-which is the usual way of correcting some things.
Could be a program that is causing it. Have you added anything new?
Do you have a restore point that you could go back to and try? This is always a good practice, so i suggest that you do it once it is running OK.
Failing that, I would be pointing a finger at the motherboard-it may be starting to fail. If that is the case, it may be terminal....

There's no point in talking naughty to me Peter, 'cos it's all pigeon English or whatever to me. I have no idea what a terminal or a mother board is! Sorry :(

I made a list of every single program running in the background as per 'processes', but I have no idea which are vital and which are not. With my luck, I'd delete the one and only process that kept my PC running....:D

I have an addit.

I went through all the 'processes' and I saw sweetIm in there, taking up over 6,oooKs . SweetIm is a program that I downloaded ages ago, didn't like, and uninstalled. How do I get it out from using up those 6,oooKs in my processes?

also do you have anti virus & anti spyware running and up to date?
if not install and run some of those - many free ones listed in stickys

How old is your puter?
what operating system? Windows ? XP ? xp pro, vista or other

you could also try system restore back to a time when it was still working good.

If it still is crashing after those you might need to look at possible hardware problems --mother board, CPU, hard drive

or if you have the OS CD you could try a reinstall/repair, but don't try that yet.

something like system mechanic might be a help too -tunes up the whole system
I've used it on 3 of our computers with no troubles-
http://www.download.com/System-Mecha...html?tag=lst-1

even when you uninstall programs most will leave pieces in the system registry - the sys mechanic can clean those out.

OK. I do have antivirus and spy-ware programs up and running. I also have a firewall.

My PC is about 4 and a bit years old, and runs XP.

It was doing this same thing before we moved states last year, then all of a sudden....it stopped happening just as I was about to get an expert in. Now, here we go again.

I've had no new hardware since about August last year.

When this happened to me, it was the hard drive in its death throes. They're only good for about 3-5 years. Luckily, I had most important things backed up on CD's or original software. Since that happened, I now have an external hard drive where I back up EVERYTHING! Once I replaced the hard drive, in the original instance, all was well. But it took the better part of two days to re-install everything. Hopefully, with the external drive, when it happens again, I won't have to spend two days and nights to rectify the situation. Your situation sounds just like mine. Constant re-boots, etc. What a pain.

Oh dear! Now I wish I hadn't asked!

Thanks anyway oldsteve. I still hope that it's something less major than that, but I suppose I'd better get myself backing up files just in case. I do have lots on disc already, so I daresay it wouldn't take more than a day to catch up with what's not done.

hey sweets...i'm going to find the web site that decyphers those proccesses. it has helped me so many times. how many is showing for you? one time i had 65 an di wasn't doing anything. :eek:

it tells you what you can safely "end".

then you might want to find out what is starting up when you start your computer.


hehehe...my wording is off..i need coffee!! :p

edited: here it is.
http://www.windowsstartup.com/wso/browse.php

all the applications are listed a-z or numerical. easy to use.

if you find one you aren't sure of..let me know. i'll look it up.




oh...just running your disk cleanup can help. same with defrag if you don't have them set to run automaticly.