Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests PC problem. Unable to solve why. HELP

I dont know where to go or get help on this. I hope anyone here is a PC geek. My PC would suddenly shut down anytime. Whats causing this? overheating? The fans are blowing pretty good from I hear. Bad video card? It doesnt shut down like ALLLL THE TIME but I would say about 2-3 days a day when I am online or anything with the PC for hours. Any advice would be helpful. thanks.

Probably overheating. Desktop or laptop? Take it apart and blow any dust out. My Toshiba A65 laptop had a problem where dust and hair would settle in clumps on the heatsink (very common problem for this laptop) so even the fan blaring at full speed didn't do a thing.

Does it shut down (or "hibernate") or restart? Sometimes if it's something that bluescreens it restarts almost immediately after showing the error so that you didn't see the blue screen.

Ive done the dust out before. Its all clean inside. Its a desktop and it shuts down as of TURNED off. There are times when it restarts. THe PC isnt that old at all. only 1.5 yr old running a 2.8ghz P4 pentium.

did you buy it or built it if every thing as far as cooling is working then theres a 75% chance its your psu did you just recently upgrade or get a new device that uses poer off the psu ie: usb devices new pci card ect any thing

when i built my freinds computer about 1 year ago it worked fine the first 5 months and then it started shutting off there are some components in the psu's that don't last long
other than that good luck

i had a problem to come to recall but it was due to my own stupidity the power cord for the pc was barly connected every time you bumped the desk just the right way bye bye all unsaved

After how long of the pc running does it turn off? What programs are you running when it does turn off? How long has it been doing it? Did you recently have something installed(hardware or software)? try plugging the computer to the wall outlet bypassing any surge protector battery backups. disconnect all external devices, you can leave your mouse kbd, speakers connected. Just some extra questions and some suggestions.

Have you tried booting in safe mode?

Power Supply. My CPU did the exact same thing until one day it fried my motherboard's PSU connector hot pin. I would get a new powersupply first, that solves many problems with CPU shutdown issues.

Could be all sorts of things. Power supply would be the most likely and the cheapest and easiest to fix. Bad memory can also cause a shutoff as could overheating of the CPU (possible even if the fans are working fine). Overheating video card is a possibility but graphical anamolies would usually be obvious before the shutdown.

damn. I was hoping it wasnt the power supply. Its a sony vaio I have here and they use special kind of power supply that requires a special connectiong that in store type dont have.