computer woes

Elin

My husbands 2 month old computer is now randomly restarting itself. If he boots it into safe mode it'll be fine but otherwise random reboots even if he's not using it. It started maybe two weeks ago. First the computer would start to slow down when he was doing multiple tasks. Then when he'd be watching a show on Hulu and maybe have a few tabs open and it would freeze. He'd restart and be fine. It's now progressed to the point where it's restarting about ever half hour. If we leave it off for a half hour or so and then turn it on he can use it for about a half hour or so before it starts acting up. It's at it's worse point today.

Two weeks ago is about when the weather here started getting warm so I thought maybe it was overheating. We checked the BIOS and it's running at about 40 C. I know that the critical temp for this processor is about 60 C. We also downloaded speedfan to see each core and it said it was running at about 35 - 40 C. He's got an AMD Phenom x4 9100e. It's a Gateway, Vista, 4 gigs Ram, after market Gforce 9500 gt.

Anyone have a clue on this? Does it sound like it's overheating to you? I will say my house is dusty as hell, if I run a box fan in the bedroom for a day or so the entire front will be clogged with dust. I don't want to crack his case and void the warranty to blow out the inside though.

proXimity

It's very possible that dust is contributing to heat, which makes it crash. Along with your reported increase in the local temperature, I'd say it probably is heat related. Hulu runs on Flash, which is proc-intensive, aka heat generating, just supporting that more.
Honestly, I would be surprised if opening up the case and having at it with a can of compressed air would void the warranty, though I cannot say that I am really up to date with my OEM warranties. You say it has an aftermarket 9500GT, which leads me to believe it was already opened up anyways, making it a moot point.
This all, of course, could also be in conjunction with some kind of malware infection, so be sure to check for that too.

pengu

I would definitely suggest overheating as well since I had this exact same problem on my old AMD. Of course being lazy as I was, I decided to ignore it until the CPU basically burnt itself out and totally went on strike. Installing a new fan for the CPU solved my woes, I recall it was a thermotake something or other which was on special at the time. Installing the fan was also slightly problematic because I put too much of the thermo paste without really realizing it, so perhaps it won't be such a bad idea to find someone (if you are experienced at this then please ignore) who has done this before and have them do it for you.

exoplasm

Those temps don't sound like they are too hot at all.

My brother had a similar problem with mysterious reboots on his new computer. He changed the surge protector that he was using for a different one and no longer has mysterious reboots.

You could have a "dirty" power feed to the circuit your computer is using. Fluctuations in the power flow could cause the power supply to freak out and reset.

theclam

I agree with exoplasm that power is more likely to be the problem than heat.

What kind of restart is it? Does EVERYTHING freeze (including speakers, mouse, keyboard) and you have to manually toggle the power switch? Does it immediately turn black and reboot itself? Those are usually hardware issues. Does it give any error messages or blue screens? Does your mouse still work after it 'freezes'? Does it go through the normal windows restart process? Those are more likely to be software related (i.e. virus).