PC Reboots

One possiblity to look at is a defective hard drive! Whenever you attempt something that involves lots or intense hard drive access, the drive may actually overload the power supply thus causing a reboot, sort of like switching off and on. Watch forintense hard drive activity during the time you perform the activity you think causes the problem. If the drive has a problem even lesser activity may cause the problem. Of course heat can cause problems like this I bet you have a large drive (20 gigs and up) that gets very hot. Forget about the video card for this problem. You should also scan for a virus with an scanner that has been updated in the last week with the latest virus signatures.

Go to Control Panel/System/Advanced Tab/Stratup and Recovery/ Select "Settings" Where it says "System Failure" uncheck "Automatically Restart" on system failure..

You may also want to check the "System Event Viewer" to see what's causing the problem. If your problem is hardware related your computer will continue to reboot regardless of whether "Sutomatically Restart" is selected or not. If the problem goes away its most likely software.

ebcdic

Try going to system properties going to the advanced tab, click on startup and recovery and uncheck automatically reboot.

The only other thing I can think of is power supply or motherboard. Something is drawing too much power when you are doing somthing of a graphical intensive nature. If it's an OEM machine, is it a low end machine. If it's a machine you built yourself, how many watts are driving the power supply. If it's a high end board, (AthlonXP, or P4) are you using a 350 watt power supply. I'd pull all of the cards except the video and see if the board has a short.

I guess its time to start reading then.... Start here!

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/2b5d6.htm

I suspect its a conflict with your video card drivers but you'll have to go through the steps to resolve the problem.

I agree with the answer about checking the power supply. You did not say if you had your computer pluged into a ups. I recelently ran into a problem where my UPS was failing and would randomly reboot my PC.

If you suspect that it is the power supply you might try disconncting any CD rom drives or extra Peripherals and see if there is still an issue.

Check your page file size. If it is not set to maximum try increasing the size at least 50mb

BECAUSE THE DRIVE HAS NEVER EXPERIENCED PROBLEMS BEFORE MEANS NOTHING. PROBLEMS START ONCE FOR THE FIRST TIME. I HAVE SEEN THE "HARDRIVE OVERLOADING THE POWER SUPPLY" PROBLEM BEFORE, WHAT IS THE WATTAGE OF THE POWER SUPPLY? HERE ARE SOME OTHER IDEAS. DISABLE ALL POWER MANAGEMENT OPTIONS IN BIOS SETUP. DISABLE THE "WAKE ON LAN" FEATURE IN BIOS. IF "ACPI AWARE OS" ENABLED IN BIOS, DISABLE. HOW MANY TSRs ARE RUNNING ON YOUR SYSTEM, TRY DISABLING MOST IF NOT ALL TO SEE IF THE PROBLEM GOES AWAY. DO A VIRUS SCAN WITH A RECENTLY UPDATED SCANNER. TRY GOING TO BIOS SETUP AND "RESET TO DEFAULT SETTINGS" SEE IF THAT CLEARS PROB. BEFORE DOING SO PRESS THE PRINT SCREEN KEY WHILE IN BIOS SETUP AND YOUR CURRENT BIOS SETTINGS WILL PRINT OUT, SO YOU CAN SET THINGS BACK AGAIN. DID YOU RUN SCANDISK? IF NOT DO SO. CHECK THE PROCESSOR FAN IS FUNCTIONING. CONFIRM THAT YOU ARE RUNNING THE MANUFACTURER'S DRIVER FOR EVERYTHING CONNECTED TO THE PC, VIDEO CARD, SOUND CARD ETC. CHECK MOTHERBOARD SITE FOR UPDATESOR FIXES TO THE BIOS. A STRONG SUSPECT IS ONE OF YOUR MEMORY STICKS. TRY REPLACING ONE IF THAT DOES NOT WORK PUT THE REPLACED ONE BACK AND REPLACE THE OTHER WITH THE NEW STICK. YOU DO NOT SAY WHAT CPU YOU HAVE, IT SHOULD HAVE OPTIONS IN BIOS TO DISABLE INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL CACHE. DISABLE ONE AT A TIME. IF YOU GET NO REBOOTS WITH INTERNAL CACHE DISABLED, REPLACE CPU. IF EXTERNAL IS AT FAULT REPLACE MOTHERBOARD. CONSIDER PROGRAMS YOU INSTALLED SHORTLY BEFORE REBOOTS STARTED. HOPE THIS HELPS.

Check the ram. Bad Ram will cause a PC to reboot.

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