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Computer randomly restarts, care to help?
TheSonicRetard
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm fixing a computer for a guy in the office and I can't figure out whats wrong. The computer will randomly shut off without warning after a few minutes. I, of course, thought it was over heating, but all the fans are spinning, and the power supply seems alright as well. The computer will turn off before windows can load so I don't have any way of actually checking the temperature.
I notice that when I mess with the ram, strange things happen. The guy has 2 sticks - a 512 mb stick, and a 1 gb stick. If I pop in the 1 gb, it'll turn off after a few minutes without fail. If I pop in the 512 into the left socket, the computer gets all screwy - sometimes turning on and off rapidly. Once I had the 512 stick in the right socket and it stayed on for about an hour and a half without turning off, at which point I powered it down. I haven't been able to replicate that.
To be sure, I have nothing else connected. It's just a bare mobo with a single IDE HDD installed. Any ideas where to start checking? Apparently this started happening after a recent thunderstorm when he left the computer on.
I notice that when I mess with the ram, strange things happen. The guy has 2 sticks - a 512 mb stick, and a 1 gb stick. If I pop in the 1 gb, it'll turn off after a few minutes without fail. If I pop in the 512 into the left socket, the computer gets all screwy - sometimes turning on and off rapidly. Once I had the 512 stick in the right socket and it stayed on for about an hour and a half without turning off, at which point I powered it down. I haven't been able to replicate that.
To be sure, I have nothing else connected. It's just a bare mobo with a single IDE HDD installed. Any ideas where to start checking? Apparently this started happening after a recent thunderstorm when he left the computer on.
TheSonicRetard on
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Swap out the ram and test some that you know is working. OR... Test the ram in another pc...
If the ram ends up not being at fault I would up the voltage for the ram from 1.8 to something like 1.9 or 2.0 (With anything Bios and overclocking/power load increasing, Attempt at risk.)
If the powersupply got hit by the storm then it might be that it now needs to be replaced.