Shutting down randomly

[PowerIStough]

My computer keeps randomly shutting down. Its really annoying. My anti-virus says there is no virus and everything is good. I downloaded some cleaners for my computer and still it keeps shutting down. I cleaned the back of the computer because there was heaps of dust there but still it shut down randomly. It is frustrating, your in a middle of a post and it shuts down and doesn't warn you. You try and turn it on straight away again but it loads and then shuts down again. You wait 5 mins and its fine and then an hour or too or if your not been using it, it shuts down. Has it got anything to do with the updates possibly? It so damn frustrating. Any help, would be much appreciated.

 

[Cleavy]

I had a similar issue where it kept resetting. Turns out I had a faulty RAM chip.

 

[BILC]

Mine used to do this

I cleaned all the dust out of the hard drive and havnt had a problem since

 

[JasRulz63]

Might be an overheating issue.

 

[scooterb]

Cleaning the 'back' of your computer won't do anything.

Take the case off, sticky tape the fans so they can't spin and either use a vacuum cleaner or blow the dust out with an air compressor.

 

[Bombers42]

Does it go through shut down procedure or just straight off? If its straight aways it's hardware related, specifically power supply.

 

[MisterB]

Without much detail, I would initially suspect this to be caused by overheating.

Use either a vacuum cleaner or compressed air to blow out as much dust as possible.

A good question is raised by Bombers42. Does it perform an orderly shutdown or just power off?

 

[BILC]

Does it go through shut down procedure or just straight off? If its straight aways it's hardware related, specifically power supply.

Straight off i think from what hes saying..

 

[Borgsta]

The fact that you can't turn it on for 5 minutes afterwards means it is over heating. Clean out the fan area.

 

[PowerIStough]

Cheers. It turns off immediately, I cleaned it up a bit yesterday and will finish it off tonight. Much appreciated.

 

[ep2018]

If you cant clean it just increase the fans rotation rate in the system BIOS (press F8 when you first start up, if I remember correctly).

 

[OzBomber]

Mine does that as well. Just turns straight off when I'm doing something. Mostly when I'm in a program that's doing something. I tryed getting rid of the dust but it didn't work.

 

[Borgsta]

get a new fan.

 

[Dookey901]

What is making you think it is the fan? is it making strange noises, running hot or something?

I suggest you check your computers System event log;
- Open Control Panel
- Administrative Tools
- Event Viewer
- System

If you are having a hardware fault a red 'Error" event will be logged in here, providing details as to where to problem could be. If you double mouse click on the error it will give you an EventID, which if you search in google it should give you a good indication as to what the problem could be. Assuming it is hardware related.

My guess would be RAM or video card problem

 

[magpies77]

Mine was doing the same. Seems my CPU was overheating, put in a new fan and all good.

Check out your cpu temperture in the BIOS.

 

[PowerIStough]

Fixed the problem. Heaps of dust I removed and I flipped the computer hardrive so the back of the computer is not facing the wall and the fan doesn't get overheated as easily. Cheers for the tips fellas.

 

[OzBomber]

Mine isn't overheating. We've had a problem where it did the same thing but it'd go really loud before it would turn off. We got someone in and they said it was overheating. This time it isn't overheating and going really loud so I don't know what the problem is.

 

[CF]

also sometimes the thermal paste between your CPU & fan dries out, so get some and reapply it. This paste helps the heat transfer from your CPU to your heatsink/fan

Do not use compressed air or a vaccum cleaner to clean your PC as some dingbat suggested. Motherboards can only take so much.

 

[scooterb]

I've been vacuuming and using a compressor for years and i've never had a hardware related problem.

If you google around, a lot of computer technicians carry around small air compressors to clean out dust. I always stop the fans from spinning by using a bit of blu tack because you don't want them spooling up.

The only dangers I can think of is if you're using like a bajillion psi (which is blatantly idiotic). Other than that, I don't know why you would say that.