computer restarts by itself very often! HELP!!

[liloutlaws]

i just formatted my computer so i doubt its any type of virus or what not. basically i had a problem before where the computer would restart, but now once it starts restarting it will keep restarting every 5 seconds before the OS even boots up. what could be the cause of this? could it be the power supply or the case (dead wires for the reset button) or do u think i should get a new motherboard?

my specs are
1.8 ghz p4
512 ram pc2700
msi motherboard
431 w power supply

any suggestions would be great thanks!

[5vz-fe]

Like thamar said, test all ur hardwares, one by one with another machine.

I had a similar problem before, and it turns out one of my memory is faulty.....
took me whole day to find that ou tho :(

[liloutlaws]

what would you guys guess as the most likely in order?

ram/mobo/chip/power supply/hard drive?

thanks

[graywolf624]

memory would be my first guess.

That being said.. have you been screwing with the computer settings?
One windows setting makes the computer force a shut down over a blue screen.. Im setup as such for security purposes.

[initiala4]

Try doing a RAM test. I had similiar problems before, but that was caused by RAM.

[Jabba]

Same thing happened to me with an Athlon 1800 that was getting to hot. A new cooler (after had I bought a new PSU :roll: ) solved the problem and now it runs happily for months without ever restarting.

[cooperluke]

Thermal shutdown, perhaps? See the readings of the cpu temp.

[AlienDB7]

Since it's a P4, most likely it's not a heat problem. Unlike an athlon, it should slow itself down significantly when the chip is overheating.

Did you try to test your ram with memtest86+? You can download it at http://www.memtest.org/
Just make a boot disk/CD with the image from the site and let it run for a few hours.

[23790554]

I had the same problem once

at first i replaced the motherboard but later found out it was a jammed power switch

[liloutlaws]

okay so i switched out pieces by pieces, i switched ram.. mobo, power supply...and it still resets. the cpu temp is around 45 C. so i don't think its a heating problem. plus sometimes it'll run for a while and sometimes it'll start resetting right away even when the system is idling. it would just keep resetting non stop before the OS boots up. any other ideas?

i looked at PC health in bios and some of the voltages were a little low. like 2.83 V for 3.3 V i don't know if that matters or not. the cpu fan is running at around 2700 rpm, but the system fan isn't running at all. what is the system fan?

[liloutlaws]

o btw..the figure i was giving was from the new power supply..i checked the specs of the old power supply and they were fine. i'm thinking of switching just the chip... what do u guys think?