misbehaving pc

Hiya, i was wondering if anyone can help with the following problem. My pc has shut itself down three times today. It has never done this before. On each occasion it restarts automatically and an error message is displayed from microsoft saying the system has recovered from a serious error, and do i want to send the details to them. As i'm not entirely sure where to start, all help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Kermischocolate.

 

Kermischocolate,

If it is Win XP based, you could start by looking in the Event Viewer (Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Event Viewer) and seeing if there are any obvious Application or System based messages. Also, get a sense of whether there are any unknown processes running on your system.

I would also try to rule out hardware problems. If it is easy to do so, open the PC case and make sure all cables and cards are well seated. In my own case, I experienced this type of symptom when the fan on my CPU died. Make sure the CPU fan (if it has one - it may not need an active fan) is working.

That's a start...

Blue

 

I agree, check the event log to see any specific errors. We'll need some more details on the crashes to help pinpoint the problem Crashes on boot-up could be caused anything. See what you can see in the event viewer, also try to post any details about the crash message that you can.. go into the 'details' screen on the pop-up message saying that it recovered from a crash.

I also agree with the hardware aspect.. make sure the fans are spinning freely, make sure all the cards are seated in the sockets all the way, and also make sure there isn't too much dust. Dust can slow the fans down as well as insulate the metal fins underneath the fans that dissipate the heat, which would trap the heat in. It's generally a good idea to take a can of air and clean out the inside of the computer once in a while, just make sure to power down the computer and let it cool off for a while before doing so.

 

did you install a program or something new prior to this....I know this sounds obvious, but was the case once with me. I installed a program, and started to get this type of thing.......it was a digital camera editing program....so think back to when this started and what you changed(if you did anything). Fr Steve