Ray Villarroya asks:
My monitor started to smoke. Turned the computer off and borrowed a friend’s monitor, which installed OK. On shutdown, the computer restarted itself. The only way to turn it off is to go through the normal shutdown procedure and when the screen goes black, hold the computer start button in for a few seconds.
Have unchecked the ‘automatically restart box’ in System Failure Section.
Have taken the covers off and vacuumed and blown all dust out.
Have tried running in Safe Mode.
Have unchecked all the items in Startup, in MSCONFIG.
All of these items have been suggested in other posts, but none of them has worked for me. Would be very grateful if someone could help. Thanks!
Browser: Firefox 16
System: Windows XP
Tagged: random restart, restart, windows issue, windows tips, windows xp
System: Windows XP
Tagged: random restart, restart, windows issue, windows tips, windows xp
11 Answers - Write an Answer
ha14
November 5, 2012remove your graphic card and boot on it.
then if nothing fixed remove ram try to boot (which will fail) replug ram.
Big thanks to all who answered, especially Ha14 and Bruce.
November 7, 2012You pointed me in the right direction. Problem solved. I found
two cards not even screwed in place. The cards were just sitting in
the slots and over time must have worked loose. I don’t have a separate
graphics card, so that was not one of the cards.
One of the suggestions was to take it to the shop for repair. If I followed
that advice I would have taken it to the shop where I bought the
computer and the very people who didn’t even screw the cards in place.
Very grateful to all who answered.
Cheers
Ray
two cards not installed correctly is heavy on the motherboard, check also if the slots are okay.
November 10, 2012Bruce Epper
November 6, 2012Check the seating of all of your expansion cards. My sister’s computer started doing the same thing after a PCI USB/FireWire card was added to her aging computer. It behaves properly when the card is not in the system, but just cannot shutdown when it is installed. (Actually a driver issue here that causes it, but I haven’t had time to reverse engineer it and fix the problem; the manufacturer denies it is a problem).
Jim Chambers
November 6, 2012Check the BIOS settings or just reset by loading the default settings
josemon maliakal
November 6, 2012It is time to service your computer …
Naveen Kumar
November 6, 2012try these steps below i think it may help you
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/windows-7-computer-restarts-automatically-after/daeb457a-3509-4be9-a85b-2935c8c3e108
Aniket Singh
November 6, 2012best link that i have found for this problem……………..
http://www.pcworld.com/article/247392/my_computer_reboots_when_i_tell_it_to_shut_down.html
Douglas Mutay
November 6, 2012It can be a hardware or driver issue. But since you’ve did all you can, why not taking it to a repair shop before it getting worse?
Indronil Mondal
November 6, 2012reset your bios
Kannon Y
November 7, 2012Hello Ray,
Pretty much everyone in this thread has had great answers. If their suggestions don’t work, I can think of two things that might solve the problem. Although, to be honest, this sounds like a hardware issue that you cannot resolve through normal means.
First, it’s possible that your graphics drivers aren’t properly updated. Unfortunately, you sound like you have excellent PC skills and so this was likely the first step you took. Another ding against this possible answer is that an inability to shut down is normally a hardware problem… (it does makes me wonder what would happen if you set the computer to automatically shut down in Power Options).
Which leads to the second point – the problem is likely related to a discrete, PCIe (or PCI) graphics card. As ha14 indicated, you might try removing the PCIe card and booting from (if you have it) the on board VGA port. I’ve never seen this particular problem with on board video before so maybe that might fix your problem. If you don’t have on board video, then another solution will be necessary.
There’s a query about a very similar problem on Techrepublic.com. Personally, some of these solutions sound sketchy – although they may be worth trying out if you completely run out of options.
For example, one solution was to disable the on board video adapter – which might solve your problem, but could possibly render your system unbootable if things went bad. I would advise discretion using these.
dhanunjayarao chunduri
November 7, 2012remove your graphic card and boot on it.
Rama moorthy
November 11, 2012try factory reset of bios and remove all cards like graphics … reverse engineer your whole hardware and set it up only with that are essentials to BOOT up a computer like ram,harddisk ,… if the problem persists contact the system manufacturer and also try searching their website ,may some one already faced this issue before..