Randomly Shuts Off - But Power Lights On?

[andantesash]

My brothers computer has just started turning off lately but the power LED remains on.

Sometimes instead of it turning off, you can hear the machine restart but the display is still on the screen and everything freezes.

Anyone got a clue whats going on?

 

[Foodang]

Is he using a video card? If so I had this problem happen to me like 3 months ago. Try using the integrated graphics and see if it stays up.

 

[deanj20]

Could be a hardware malfunction. I had a computer that started doing that some years ago. One of the transistors on the motherboard was swollen - likely caused by the power supply going out.

How often does this happen? I guess you could leave it booted into safemode for a day or booted into a Live-CD OS to see if the problem recurs, thus eliminating any software errors.

 

[andantesash]

i went into the bios about 5mins ago for about 2mins and it made the restart noise and just froze up.

Its onboard graphics on it.

Any ideas? I originally thought the power supply but didnt want to buy one incase it wasnt that.

 

[deanj20]

How old is it? What's the make/model? Is it still under warranty?

It definitely sounds like a power supply issue or a problem with the motherboard. You could disconnect everything from the mobo (PCI/AGP cards, HDDs and CD Drives) except the power supply and hang out in BIOS and see if it does it again. That's the only thing I know to try.