Random Re-Booting / Freezing

[34534534534555]

Hello

I have rather an old pc, that has been upgraded periodically. Here's the story, spec first:
Spec: AMD Athlon 800, 320Mb RAM, 6GB Hdd, 8Mb gfx.

It was running WinME absolutely fine (albeit at my disapproval, but i had lent my XP to a friend). For no apparent reason it started freezing and rebooting randomly, when i say randomly i mean everytime it was turned on without fail rendering it unusable, so i decided to upg. incase it was WinME finally grinding to a halt.

Clean install of XP Pro, all working fine, no h/ware conflicts or driver problems etc. Sometimes will run fine for a session (the period i have it on for), other times it will reboot or freeze (usually reboot) on startup or sometime thereafter, no apparent problems at all. Sandra (Sisoft) tells me voltages etc are ok, and reports no problems. I guess this means it is down to h/ware, but any ideas as to specifics? I don't have the right parts to swap-out so i was looking for most likely culprits?

Any ideas,?? Many thanks IA.


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[longlivegoku]

Well could be power supply, processor, RAM,......Those would be my first three guesses. If it is locking hard and you have to reboot manually processor could be overheating. Just random rebooting on it's more like the power supply.

 

[Krosus]

Psu would be my first guess as well, second i would check the cpu fans still working although the computers old even then they have tempetaure safeguards build into the systems that caused shutdowns or reboots.

 

[torturedmind]

1. check for any leaky capacitors (those cylindrical things attached on your mobo) if they are bulging on top or deposited some substance around them. if there are any, you need to replace your mobo.
2. while the pc is on, carefully feel your cpu's heat sink if t's unusually hot. if it is, you've got a problem there.
3. if you have another known good psu (borrwo from a friend or if you have a spare with you), use it in place of your current psu and see if the problem disappears.

hope this helps. peace!

kilroy
philippines

"Illegitimis non carborundum!"

 

[34534534534555]

Many thanks for your reply's. I have swapped the PSU and all 'seems' to be working fine now.


FYI the old PSU was a High Power switching power supply. Model HPC-300-202. I don't know if these are cheapies or not!!

Many thanks.