Computer keeps shutting down

[dooviewhacker]

My computer keeps shutting down for no apparent reason. I
m running XP pro, with an AMD 2200 and a gigabyte motherboard with 256mb ram. My video card is an nvidia tnt2 32mb.

It doesn't turn off the pc - I have to turn it off myself, but it does totally shut down the system - and I can't soft boot it with ctrl-alt-del either. It just shuts down everything and hangs there.


Any thoughts?

 

[ajroxit]

right click on my computer and select manage. then lick on event viewer to see if windows is logging any errors.
i allmost think its a driver issue, go to a command prompt and type SIGVERIF to see a list of unsigned drivers. update the unsigned drivrs with WHQL or hal compliant drivers from the manufacturer.
dont forget to check the event viewer first though as it may tell you exactly whats crashing your system.
good luck AJ

 

[dooviewhacker]

If PSU stands for power supply then it's 400w. The motherboard is a ga-7n400-l1

I haven't installed anything which I would suspect to be causing the problem. I'm running zonealarm pro, norton antivirus, norton security (disabled but it still loads up anyway - maggots), the Gigabyte utility manager (which I don't really use). I'm on a usb modem with adsl.

I can't seem to find any relevant errors in the events viewer - although I didn't know it was there until you told me - i'll have another look straight after when it happens next.

And when I ran sigverif it came back with no unsigned drivers.

I suspect this might be a video problem, so I'll try to update the drivers (although I don't know how likely it is i'll be able to get old tnt2 drivers updated).

Cheers for the advice...any more thoughts?

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Have you ran any spyware programs or virus programs to check to see if you have any trojins.Just a thought.P.S

 

[dooviewhacker]

I've got ad-aware on so i'm pretty confident there's no spyware - i'm also running za pro and norton av.

I was thinking that it might actually be za. The truevector internet monitor seems to be the cause (or at least one of the last processes that fail) of the shutdown from what I can tell from the event viewer.

Is Zonealarm pro known to cause these sorts of problems?

 

[ravenmadtaoist]

I don't have much faith in ZA Pro myself... I was cracked when I utilized it and my provider told me that it wasn't the first time they had heard of it and reccomended something else...

 

[Techman]

Might try checking CPU tempeature. CPU fan working. If it takes a little while for it to shut down once the CPU gets hot enough.

 

[dooviewhacker]

Well it's nothing to do with windows because the same thing just happened in bios...

The whole system just shut down, unable to soft boot, have to reset or power off.

I'm guessing this must be a hardware problem - probably heat - but it's a brand new mb+cpu with a standard fan and heatsink.

I'm not running any extra cooling in the case - but it ran fine for the first week or so - it's only started doing this in the last few days.

Any thoughts?

Cheers...

 

[dooviewhacker]

Also, I did (rather stupidly now, I think) use gigabyte's @bios internet software flash program to update my bios - i'm hoping it's not this which is causing the probs...

 

[Apokalipse]

did it used to do that when you first got it? if so then i say it IS a hardware problem, or it may just be that something (maybe one of the transistors) on the MB or CPU fried itself sometime later on from static electricity or being part of the computer that doesn't get cooled.