Windows stablility problem?

Rollofthedice

New Member
My computer has shut down on me in the middle of surfing the internet. There's no error dialog box or anything, the computer just shuts off.

There's some kind of red button on the back that I would slide to the right and then back to the left and this would let me turn the computer back on sometimes. Once it stayed on for about 2 hours, the next time it made it to the "Windows is starting up" screen, and then I wasn't able to turn it on at all. Finally, I turned off the surge protector and let the computer sit for 1 or 2 days, and now it's on and I'm posting on this site to find out what's going on.

All the power cords are plugged in and fine. The computer is from around 2002 with a Windows XP operating system. I ran Panda Scan Anti-Virus and only got malware trackers, no viruses.

The only thing that seems weird is a dialog box that pops up right after I turn on my computer that says "Windows prevented Direct CD from loading drivers that could cause Windows to become unstable" I called Compaq/HP customer support and the guy thought that it was a software problem and not a hardware one.

So is Direct CD making my computer die on me? Can I delete this or is it important?

I was going to take it to a computer shop, but if you could help me I would really appreciate it, thanks a lot for the advice.
 
There's some kind of red button on the back that I would slide to the right and then back to the left and this would let me turn the computer back on sometimes.
that sounds like the power regulator for the psu,does it say 110v ~ 220v
if it does dont play around with it

have you tried uninstalling directcd, does that stop the issue

I have t say that random complete power cut offs are not software related. And somewhere would have to go throught the OS and so windows would give you an indication is was shuting down

may need to consider a complete restart to determine if its software or hardware related
 
I am willing to bet it's a hardware issue since you can play around with the power regulator for the psu I bet the psu is going bad...did you recently add any hardware that could be drawing more watts than what the psu is capable of handling?
 
I ended up taking it to a computer repair shop and it was a problem with my power supply. It cost about $130 to fix which isn't too bad. Thanks for your replies.
 
The "red button" on the back should not be switched unless you move to a country using 230V, as this will destroy the PSU or even the whole computer for that matter if you're unlucky. So don't touch it in the future.
 
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