SmittyFL Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 I have a HP pavillion. The computer is shutting down at random. It isn't closing windows or anything, it just shuts off like if you were to pull the plug. Then it restarts on it's own. It's totally random, sometimes it will work for a couple hours and sometimes it shuts down every 30 seconds. Can a virus cause something like this or is it more likely a hardware issue? I've run all my anti-virus and adware stuff and it isn't helping. I've checked all the cables and tried different wall plugs. I talked to HP and they said they would send me a new "power supply". I think that is something that goes inside the computer as opposed to a new power cable. I don't know what they think I'm going to do with it. Anyway, anyone heard of something like this?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynn jones Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 sounds to me it's your power supply. when those babies go all sorts of things can happen. wait until you see smoke, that's when the fun starts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlin Orr Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 I would try to avoid turning the computer on until you have the new power supply installed. When you lose power while programs are running you will likely lose some info. Some times it makes no difference - sometimes you lose something critical and your program - or operating system - will lose some functionality or completely cease to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz-0 Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 What operating system. If you are not getting a blue screen of death, you either have bad power (i.e. power drops, hits, or dips) in which case a UPS can fix it. You have a bad power supply, in which case, get a new one. Or your motherboard has power issues, could be anything from a dying power distribution subsytem, to too much cathair causing overheating and failure, to a trace grounding out on the case when things vibrate right. However, what you may have is one of any number of problems causing a blue screen of death, but you have windows XP which defaults to reboot on a BSOD. Which is an extremely stupid default behavior as it makes many diagnosible problems into something that looks like random failure, thus making it look like hardware problems. to disable auto restart if you have it enabled do the following. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> System Go to Advanced Under the Startup and Recovery section, click Settings... Under System Failure un-check "Automatically restart" See if the failure still seems like random restarting, or if you now get an actual BSOD with an error message. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 How old is your system...? I'm going to go with a power supply recommendation, too. The Pavilions seem to have cheapo little low-wattage power supplies installed. Any drop/interruption in power flow can cause any number of internal failures-to-operate. All that sudden on-and-off is not good for either data OR hardware eventually. DON'T wait for the smoke to appear. The Pavilion has an absurdly small case, and in order to reach ANY other component conveniently you pretty much need to remove the power supply... but in this case since it IS the PSU we're talking about, R & R of this unit is easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dirtypool40 Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 I had this happening on a desk top a couple of years ago, turns out one of the fans was "tits up" and was allowingthings to heat up. The computer would get slower and slower-er as it heated up then reaching a certain point, it would decide to shut itself down. It took several visits before the DR. figured it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandro Posted December 9, 2004 Share Posted December 9, 2004 What operating system. If you are not getting a blue screen of death, you either have bad power (i.e. power drops, hits, or dips) in which case a UPS can fix it. You have a bad power supply, in which case, get a new one. Or your motherboard has power issues, could be anything from a dying power distribution subsytem, to too much cathair causing overheating and failure, to a trace grounding out on the case when things vibrate right. However, what you may have is one of any number of problems causing a blue screen of death, but you have windows XP which defaults to reboot on a BSOD. Which is an extremely stupid default behavior as it makes many diagnosible problems into something that looks like random failure, thus making it look like hardware problems. to disable auto restart if you have it enabled do the following. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> System Go to Advanced Under the Startup and Recovery section, click Settings... Under System Failure un-check "Automatically restart" See if the failure still seems like random restarting, or if you now get an actual BSOD with an error message. I agree, most likely it is the power supply. If it is not, you got a bad motherboard. Once you fix it, get your self a UPS, not surge protector but a UPS. You can find it at CompUSA or any Office product retail store. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcoliver Posted December 10, 2004 Share Posted December 10, 2004 Is the room hot? Try opening one side of the case and look at the cooling fans (esp. on the CPU). Maybe it's not spinning fast enough due to gunk or dust. Or what they said, bad PSU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dajarrel Posted December 10, 2004 Share Posted December 10, 2004 Like SigLady said, you don't want to wait for the smoke to appear, but dang if sometimes, on an intermittent problem, you wish it would smoke so you could find the errant component and fix it. FWIW dj Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SmittyFL Posted December 10, 2004 Author Share Posted December 10, 2004 I received the power supply from HP. I figured it out over a 6 pack but that didn't solve the problem. They are having me send it back to them on the theory that it is a CPU problem. Thanks for the replies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoNsTeR Posted December 10, 2004 Share Posted December 10, 2004 FWIW, there was in fact a virus going around about 2 years ago that caused random shutdowns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skywalker Posted December 13, 2004 Share Posted December 13, 2004 Noah, could you post the virus name, please? My brother-in-law is having the very same problem on his PC and I'm trying to figure out what is the problem. At present it looks more like a HW problem, but I'd like to explore all possibilities. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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