problem with my pc

[imbigbear]

hi, (i dont know if this is the right section but anyway)
over the past few days my computer has been randomly restarting and when i get back on it says "your computer has recovered from a serious error"
it does it every 15 minutes or so, sometimes it does it as soon as i get back on and other times it can go an hour or so before it crashes.
and if that wasnt bad enough. yesterday all my files were wiped from my computer when i turned it on, and everything has been reset to what it was like when i first had my computer, most of my programms have gone aswell, i was left with only the internet and a few other basic things.
what could be wrong with my computer and how could i fix it.

 

[PC eye]

A failing cpu can be ruled out immediately there. But you are seeing a hardware related problem. How old is the system and is it a custom build or a store bought complete? If the system is a few years old you could be seeing the bios EProm chips starting to fail. That happened lately on an older Socket A model board where the hard drive suddenly became invisible. A repartitioning, format, and new installation of Windows soon saw everything stall when Windows was loading. A reduction of the memory timings saw a normal running system at the lower bus speed. That was a bios problem.

A bad capacitor in a power supply can give you a few headaches with the system restarting quick since the main draw seen on a supply is actually when first powering up the system and loading continues after the post tests. But the failing supply won't see files wiped off of a drive. A bad drive is one idea to look at if it is showing signs of a failure soon to come. The one thing to ask you here besides system information is how long have you been seeing this problem?