windows keeps crashing

[titbread]

Hey, my windows xp pro which i run on a 1.67ghz AMD athlon 2000+ processor with 512mb ddr ram has started restarting itself randomly sometimes when i have tasks running, sometimes when confiqurations are changed and sometimes when nothing is happening at all.

Sometimes when i load a mp3 windows will completly hang, the mouse wont even move. I work with PHP and mySQL and did have these installed and the apache web server running on my machine, mysql and apache where running as services. I uninstalled these though because i no longer test php on this machine. I uninstalled the programs and stopped the services but my machine still continues to restart itself

A blue screen is flashed up just before my bios is shown (the computer restarting) but its so quick i dont have time to read it. My system also becomes very unstable very often, this NEVER used to happen. And i know for certain it isn't because i'm maxing my RAM out, i often have 200mb - 250mb left free when my computer becomes sluggish and un responsive.

Irony of it is, i've tried posting this message 4 times and my machine has restarted everytime i come towards this point! So i hope it works this time! lol

I also recently defragged my machine but this hasn't done anything. I have also ran norton anti virus on my machine and i have no viruses. Could this be something to do wiv spyware making my machine un responive??

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this problem needs to be fixed.

Thanks for any help in advance :D

~tom

[-pops-]

The first thing that comes to mind is a lack of power from your PSU. Even though you say this shutdown occurs when you aren't doing anything, Windows and especially XP does an awful lot "behind the scenes". If you have spyware as well, your machine can be doing a lot of overtime. Have a look around this site (in the security section) for anti-adware and spyware utilities. Install them and see what happens then.

What is the rating of your PSU?

Another thing may be the CPU overheating.

These, of course, are first ideas and I'm sure others will come up with other suggestions.

[djohn]

Further to -pops- suggestions, you can turn off the automatic re-boot and this will then leave the message up on-screen for you to read and post. Forgot how you do this but others will know. ;)

Also might be a memory problem. If you have more than one stick, remove one and try running for a while if still having a problem remove that stick and insert the other one. :unsure:

[Guest Shirley_Crabtree]

Further to -pops- suggestions, you can turn off the automatic re-boot and this will then leave the message up on-screen for you to read and post. Forgot how you do this but others will know.  ;)

Also might be a memory problem. If you have more than one stick, remove one and try running for a while if still having a problem remove that stick and insert the other one.  :unsure:

Press pause and windows key together.

"Advanced","Startup and recovery","settings",uncheck "automatically restart"

Keep hitting ok till all closed.

Cheers.

[Boris]

I've got exactly the same sort of problem ! :(

Read this thread and take a look at what I've done so far to resolve it ?

http://www.windowsforum.org/support/forum/...?showtopic=7179

My problem appears to be driver related so I'll be having to verify them all one by one with verifier.exe to see which one is causing the problem. A long job ?

[Guest Shirley_Crabtree]

I was reading about your problem,Boris,and used that dcombobulater thing last night out of idle curiousity.

Ever since I've had the exact same problem :(

I did what SirRadfordln suggested and instead of restarts,was plagued by bsods :blink:

Funnily enough I'd only reformatted yesterday after fitting a new cpu and motherboard so I didn't mind reformatting again today.

PC is back to normal :)...Now we just need to work out how to fix yours and titbreads.

Cheers.

Shirl.