Hi,

My PC has a mind of its own and decides to turn itself of and restart, right in the middle of me working on it, but sorry the restart is always a failure attempt, because it is unable to find the drives and therefore unable to complete restart, it does this many times in a row and I switch it off in order to manually restart but it won't complete boot before it begins boot process all over and eventually it doesn't come on at all, some other times it decides to hang in the middle of me working and once I restart it, the problem comes up again.

What is the problem and what do I do, it shdnt be a virus since I don't connect to the internet with the PC. I am frustrated becos it just acquired it from a previous user.

deboh

The symptoms you describe are indicative of a hardware problem. Suggest you take computer to local repair shop and have them diagnose. If you wish to do it yourself, things to verify would be:

Processor and power supply cooling fans - Are they all turning at proper rate?
Hard drive - Need manufacturer's diagnostic utility. Will be impossible to use if computer constantly rebooting. Suggest unplugging hard drive and see if computer stabilizes.
Power supply - Need a tester.
Memory - Need software diagnostic utility like Memtest86.com (http://www.memtest86.com). Same issue as with hard drive if computer not stable. Suggest pulling out any unnecessary modules and trying modules individually until computer stabilizes.

If I had to guess, I'd say your hard drive is flaky since the detection is sporadic upon reboot.

Next guess, if the computer was recently moved, is that an add-in card jiggled loose and is not properly seated in its socket. Remove and reinstall the card(s).

Note for most of this work, the power cord needs to be disconnected and the motherboard and power supply given 30 seconds to discharge before unplugging anything from the motherboard. Also, anti-static precautions are a must such as grounding yourself well before touching anything internal.

Thanks scleros, something or two worked for me from what you mentioned but the most obvious one is the hard drive, one of them was just a tryand see for me, I wasn't working in full capacity initially, but I put it in anyway, now that I have removed it I seem to have stability, I only have to watch for the next few days and see how my work flow goes.

I still plan to reinstal windows and also ungrade to servicepack 3 for xp, since the original user suggested me doing that anyway.

Thanks