Computer shutting down on its own...

Hi All,

This just started happening yesterday out of the blue and has never happened before. The odd thing about it is, there is no error in the Event Viewer which leads me to think that it may be a hardware issue. Here are the specs of my machine:

Windows XP Pro
1 Gig of RAM
Athlon XP 2100+ w/ Thermaltake Volcaon 7 fan set on High
Maxtor 60Gb drive
Maxtor 120Gb drive
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w/ Iceberq 4 fan
Abit KX7-333 mobo
Antec 350 Watt PSU
Antec 1080B case
4 80mm fans

I've had this computer for over 2 years and like I said earlier, this is the first time something like this has happened to me. The CPU/GPU/Memory speeds have never been overclocked either. I opened the sucker up after the first time it happened and cleaned out the dust pretty much from everything. I even took apart the Thermaltake fan/heatsink and cleaned that up real good and even applied a new layer of arctic silver on the CPU itself.

What leads me to think that it's overheating is the fact that it only happens while playing a game. The thing that gets me is that the game I play is not graphic intensive at all (Counter-Strike). After waiting a couple minutes, I can turn on the computer again. Looking at the CPU temp in the BIOS, the highest it read was 57 degrees celcius. Looking at the CPU temp when turning the computer on for the first time, it'll read 43 degrees celcius and climb and stay between 51-53 degrees celcius. I have the CPU temp warning shutdown disabled in the BIOS, too.

What can it be? What should be the first thing I should eliminate while trying to save this rig?

Thanks in advance!

Matt

(^^;?( I am appearing out of the blue, because no one try to answer. )

The packet-write or some CD writing soft do nasty, reportedly.

The power supply may be weak or unstable.

Of course over-heating may be considered in this summer.

By the way a certain PC will automatically power on when the fluor lamp switch off. That is to say, when the voltage is up, the ATX automatically fires up, reportedly.

(^^;?(Psychic? disappearing into the blue.)

this thing about the pc automatically booting up, can be controlled through some BIOS-es. look for "wake on power up" or something like that

Thanks for the help, guys. With my problem, the computer does not boot itself back up after it shuts down. It just completely stays off and cannot be turned back on for 5 mins or so (assuming that it has to cool down a bit).

If so, you'd better introduce some another system monitor programme apt for your chip to make the matter clear.

Arkantos's remark probably upon some IBM like functions which can shut down and boot up automatically, by bios setting or by windows programme, otherwise by LAN.

You might want to check if your power supply is providing the enough wattage to power all the devices. It may also be defective, you could try replacing the power supply and see if the problem goes away.

it may also be possible, that some device that takes powerfrom the smps directly, is fouling up on the 5 volt bus. the short circuit threshold is pretty low, so a little bit out of the line, and snap! you box is off. so try removing a hdd and trying to run it for a coupla hours