problem with my mobo?

[postman_pat]

basically my pc keeps restarting for no apparent reason. either freezing and then restarting or simply just restarting. i assumed it was a virus seeng as at the time my comp was covered in them! so i have sent it to a comp shop several times and they claim to have gotten rid of all the viruses. but the problem still persists so i was wondering if its a hardware probelm - i.e. mobo, ram or cooling inefficieny. i want to completely rule out overheating so is there a way for me to measure the temp of my cpu and/or ram using the system bios? i have no idea what the mobo is but its running an athlon xp 1.6 and was brought about 2 years ago. also i someone can tell me what the max temp to have a cpu running at is so that if i can tell the temp through the bios feature then i can see how bad the prob really is!

thanks for any help in advance. ill be getting a pc after xmas but i need to sort this prob out for my rents before they by me a new one

 

[canuck]

A lot of times this kind of issue is caused by a bad power supply. Some mobos come with hardware monitoring in the bios you just have to look to see if it's there (hold the del key while booting). If you don't know anything about bios settings be carefull not to change anything while you are rooting around. It should nag you about any changes when you try to exit. Every proc and mobo have different specs and tolerances to heat, check the oem's website for this info.

 

[Praetor]

What are your system specs?