case causes computer lockup & reboot

richie78

New Member
This is a problem that I've been told is caused by the computer case that I have. It's a computer that my brother built for me back in 2000. Worked ok until about two yer ago. Every now and then the computer will lock up so that I have to do a power off and reboot. At other times it will just reboot all by itself while I'm using it. And this is frustrating because many times I'm trying to solve something and can't remember how I reached the point where the computer does the unannounced/unexpected reboot.

I am not a technical expert when it come to the mechanical aspects of a computer, so I cannot really judge whether my case is causing these problems. Anyone have any suggestions or thoughts on how I can determine if the case is the source of the problems or not?

richie
 
On a system that is now 8yrs. old anything could be causing the problems like a worn hard drive, bad memory, cpu starting to go, board maybe?, or something is overheating?, or the power supply is failing.

After 2-3yrs. most have already looked at or are planning to buy or build a new system if they haven't already. 8yrs. is a long time in computer terms while you still can find many old systems still running.
 
With a computer that old exhibiting those symptoms you look at faulty capacitors on the board, dust clogging the cooling or a bad psu. You also might want to consider flashing the bios to the most current version available, which is probably quite old in itself. After you flash, reset the bios to default and then try it for a while.

Also, if it's XP then you can take a look in the error log that's in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. Check under Applications and System. It should have coded at the time of the crash.
 
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