Im asking because ive never faced this problem before. I had Windows Media Player running, (listening to Peter Murphy), had V8Buick open, and had photoshop open. I was working in photoshop and all of a sudden my computer just shut off. Like the power went off immediately. The monitor still had power and was on, as well as the printer and speakers. I pushed the ON button on the computer and nothing happened. I then turned the power strip off and back on and the computer started up on its own. What could cause this. I know the computer is not overheating or anything like that. I am running: Windows XP Home Edition, with SP2 AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 2.07GHz, 480mb of Ram ASUS mobo I know I do not have any virus or spyware because I ran a check for all of that about 2hrs ago...
I've had this happen to me more than a few times. Once in a great while it just happens, don't know if it was the power or the computer or etc. The other times, my power supply died followed by a couple of hardrives and eventually my motherboard. Backup everything you need now so you don't get surprised later.
It sounds like you may have tripped the circuit breaker in the power strip. Do your self a flavor and go to staples and buy one of the APC battery backup power strips. Its not that expensive ($50) and will save you countless headaches when ever the power gets interrupted for whatever reason. I manage the computer dept where I work - in charge of about 150 pcs and 20 servers.....you wouldn't believe what Ive seen over the years - you can fry your OS setup with sudden power offs as well as fry hardware if its a power outage and they turn on and spike you. Its cheap insurance. We've been rolling them out to all the desktops this past year.....
It did it again. This time, I didnt touch the power strip. I waited about 5mins , came back and hit the ON button on the computer and it came back on... Its never done this before, and this computer was recently built within the past 6months.
I had a machine that did this... it was a Video Card driver. make sure your drivers are all up to date.
is it going into sleep or stand-by mode ?? When it "comes back" does it go through the initial BIOS screen before windows even begins to boot ??
I could be many things - from software/OS to hardware. An ATI graphics card, in good shape, will do this to my Win 2000 & XP if the any correct driver is installed. My friend had the same problem as you for quite a while before learning it was a bad hard drive. She finally opened the machine, turned it on, and carefully jiggled each wire connection, one by one. When she did the hard drive, it died. After doing this several times we decided it was the drive, not the plug itself. Of course, the machine would run fine for a while, sometimes all day. Other times it just shut off. It is possible that something "overheated" causing either a short-circuit or break in the circuit. If it is a small wiring problem or bad/cracked runner on a circuit board (little electrical path - looks like lines), heat doesn't have to be too high to cause a very small component to expand & cause a problem if it is bad. If you decide to try jiggling wires with the machine on, keep all metal away (you don't want to short something accidentally). Also, be sure to have some part of your skin touching the metal chasis to prevent static electricity from damaging anything. Make it part of the same arm that is jiggling things - that way, if there is a high-voltage short, the voltage will not go through the chest.
My former home PC did the same thing. Started with just an occaisonal, mysterious shutdown....got worse and more frequent until it completely died. Not sure what the exact problem was. By that time, everything was Fried so it was hard to tell what caused it all. They speculated it was a problem with the powersource. I had another here at work do the same kind of thing. Took it apart immediately and discovered that the cooling fan for the powersource did not work at all. It would come on and work fine for a while, but after it got hot... Just some thoughts.
As it is my business to troubleshoot these things, here's what I'd do in the order I'd do them. 1) This is free... plug the PC into the wall and not the powerstrip. See if it makes a difference. If so, the powerstrip is defective and tripping the breaker. 2) Buy and run COUNTERSPY and then run Hijack This. If you aren't sure how to run Hijack This, PM me a screen print of the print out and I can tell you what to delete. 3) Scan for viruses. 4) Open the case and be sure the CPU isn't overheating. When PCs overheat they shut down. Good luck. Sounds like a virus.
I know absolutely 0 about this subject.......but mine used to do that with my old scanner. If I made 1 copy it was OK......but on the second copy, as soon as I would hit the "scan" button, BOOM! She'd go off. Every time. When I got a new USb scanner, the problem went away. They told me it was b/c I am running XP and the old scanner was not made for Xp, even though I was using the latest driver. What does this have to do with your problem? I don't know!! ou:
That's exactly how mine went. Went through 3 hardrives first with each dying and then the whole power supply went, dead fan. By that point, the whole motherboard died with it, cpu was fine but I'd attribute that to the dragon orb I threw on it.
