Windows Randomly Shuts Down

jmedina

jmedina

New Member
I have been working on a computer for my friend. It is running Windows XP and it could not connect to the internet. It also randomly shut down and had a timer. I reinstalled XP for him and the internet is now working. But, There is still a timer and it will just shut down. Is it a hardware problem?
 
Timer? Never heard of one.

Can you give us more details? Any blue screens? Any messages? And much time do you get before is shuts down?
 
It's most likely Windows related while not ruling out something overheating. First look over the power options to see if those are still set to go into standby in 20 minutes and set those to never. Make sure the hibernation option is not checked.

The isass.exe file will cause swift unexpected shutdowns. The more common problem is Windows not shutting down when the shutdown button is clicked on for some reason. There are programs that will automatically shut a Windows machine down when specifying a certain amount of time. But monitoring temps would be the first thing to try.
 
My friend told me that it was a computer used to test different graphic cards and than he bought it used. It has a few fans because of that. I think there is only one graphics card though. It could be the temp though. It is a clear case with 1 window and I think it is aluminum to keep it running cool. I'm guessing it was probably built from scratch. It has 1 GB of Memory. It gives me a minute before it shuts down.
 
Could be the chipset itself or a bad cap on the board giving out. You wouldn't see high temps on SpeedFan or some other program in that short of time while a failing component could easily be heating up fast even the bios eprom.

Being a test board I'd have to say that it would be best to plan on replacing it since it has now apparently outlived it's usefullness and could go at any moment. Or it could simply be a need to put a fresh battery in on the board itself.

On one old Socket A build here while memory was being rejected by the board the system was seeing unexpected restarts and one day simply remained dark when pressing the power button. A quick trip to a local store for a calculator(CR2032) lithium battery saw the system spring to life. That was a $2+ item there.
 
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