PC constantly restarting

[goldbricker]

This evening my PC has started booting up to just passed the bios screen usually to the screen saying that Windows failed to boot then restarting. I thought that it was something to do with the hard drive but when I tried to change the setting to boot from cd-rom it restarted while I was in the bios setup so it seems unlikely that that is the cause.

The PC has been running well since January but in the past couple of weeks it has restarted without warning a couple of times but come back up again without any problems. Anyone got any ideas what could be causing this?

[VR46]

which operating system you using ? it's not just a broken fan and it's overheating and restarting ?

[goldbricker]

Windows XP. How can you tell if the fan is broken? The main fan on the motherboard sounds like it is ok when it boots but when it restarts it drops down to a much slower speed (not sure if this is normal). There's also a fan over the cpu that seems to be functioning OK and also a fan on the graphics card. I'm wondering if it's a PSU issue - it's currently a 300W supply should that be enough?

[wod]

i'd try another psu as that is most likely the cause of the reboots and go into the bios and load the default settings to see if that will sort the problem

[SubparMario]

Sounds to me like an overheating problem, can you make it into the monitoring section of the BIOS and check the CPU temperature?

[goldbricker]

I tried fiddling with the bios but it even restarts while I'm in the bios and also when I've unplugged everything except the ram to see if it stays alive but it still does the same.

I don't think it's overheating as I've had this setup like this for some time and overheating hasn't been a problem. I'm going to try and get a replacement PSU and see if this fixes it. Anyone got any suggestions of a good place to get one?

[VR46]

ebuyer.co.uk are v cheap, depends how much power you need; ie what graphics card etc you have tbh, they range from about a tenner to ?80 ish.