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Computer restarts not the computer's fault?
Raneados
police apologistyou shouldn't have been there, obviouslyRegistered User regular
police apologistyou shouldn't have been there, obviouslyRegistered User regular
My computer's restarting itself with some frequency, but as far as I can tell it's not any sort of virus or malware or any of that jazz. I haven't been fiddling with it, so I'm hesitant to say it's anything in the hardware.
And some of my lights and AC unit, the fan in the bathroom, and bathroom lights, hallway lights, etc have been dimming and flickering slightly.
I jumped to the conclusion that my apartment's electricals have been just pooping on themselves, but before I go to them and tell them to fix it, I'd like to be sure it's nothing of mine.
It's a problem for the computer because a random restart every 10 minutes to 6 hours is quite frustrating, as you can probably figure. my computer's not that great, either, so starting it back up and getting back to what i was doing can take quite a while.
The fan is running, and there's not even a side on the computer (it's been cobbled and frankensteined together quite a lot in its life) and the airflow isn't hot, so I'm sure it's not a temperature thing
and they don't happen with any sort of predictability. No program or activity causes them or even suggests them, so tell me what else I could be looking into and fixing on the cheap, as replacing the whole thing really isn't an option right now
And some of my lights and AC unit, the fan in the bathroom, and bathroom lights, hallway lights, etc have been dimming and flickering slightly.
I jumped to the conclusion that my apartment's electricals have been just pooping on themselves, but before I go to them and tell them to fix it, I'd like to be sure it's nothing of mine.
It's a problem for the computer because a random restart every 10 minutes to 6 hours is quite frustrating, as you can probably figure. my computer's not that great, either, so starting it back up and getting back to what i was doing can take quite a while.
The fan is running, and there's not even a side on the computer (it's been cobbled and frankensteined together quite a lot in its life) and the airflow isn't hot, so I'm sure it's not a temperature thing
and they don't happen with any sort of predictability. No program or activity causes them or even suggests them, so tell me what else I could be looking into and fixing on the cheap, as replacing the whole thing really isn't an option right now
Raneados on
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That said, if you're concerned with the electrical in your apartment, a call to the super wouldn't hurt. Just say your lights have been flickering a lot lately, and that should be enough.
Aside from getting your electrical "fixed," make sure your PC is on a power bar, not plugged directly into an outlet. Try moving it to another outlet as well. Inspect the power cable to make sure there are no kinks or exposed wires. Better yet, just replace it if you have a spare.
Hardware-wise, based on your limited amount of information, I'd lean toward it being the power supply. If your computer is rather old, chances are you won't need anything fancy to replace it, so you can grab one for like $20 to test it out.
Go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> Administrative Tools and start Event Viewer (this is for Win7).
Go to Windows Logs -> System. That should have every shutdown your computer has done. See if there's any errors in that log.
I did call the people today about the electricity, and they said I had a "loose bulb", although I don't know how this would cause lights in 3 separate rooms to flicker, the refrigerator, the AC, the bathroom fan to rev up and down, the fuse box to hiss occasionally, and possibly my computer to lose power, but we'll see
if the power supply is only 20 bucks or so, that's probably doable and hey if it isn't that, I at least have a spare power supply
I moved the computer to another close-by outlet yesterday but still had the same issue with restarting
I moved the computer across the room to an outlet on what I think is a separate circuit, so we'll also see on that
power cable looks fine. Don't have a spare so I'll hold on that until I try other stuff
under the error log for win Xp, There are some errors, but I'm not sure if they're the shutdown times
The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
sptd
source: Service control manager
Event ID: 7026
Driver detected an internal error in its data structures for .
Source: sptd
Event ID: 4
a few of those, I'll keep an eye on it, not sure if they're occurring when the thing shuts down, the last pair of them happened when I started the computer up just now
with a little experimenting, plugging my surge protector bar into one of 2 outlets on one side of the room and turning it on makes the lights + fridge and etc to their flicker/revup/revdown dance
moving the computer to the other side of the room has fixed the problem with the computer and the flickering, I don't know much about electronics and circuits and etc, but I'm figuring the wiring in the place was done by some sort of gorilla, and as a result, too much (one power bar) electrical equipment plugged into one thing fucks with all the connecting systems and was restarting my computer
problem solved i guess!
only to unlock another potentially house-burny-downy problem