Why does my pc shut down during boot up?

Question

The last few weeks, my pc had the problem of shutting off during bootup. Once it was started up though, it ran perfectly fine until the next time it got booted.

We recently moved to a new house and now it shuts down so frequently that i couldn't get into windows after 3 hours of trying it. So i decided to try a format.

The format of the disk worked but the instal of windows (XP) shuts of at random points.

When i formated the pc i left it on overnight, formatting and loading the windows install did not make it shutdown even after 8hours of idle time.

it doesn't seem to be a heat problem since it runs for a few minutes and it will run for a few minutes again.

Answer 1

Heat is a possible issue. But I would bet that you would have some bad hardware. Since its powering off and not restarting we can rule out memory, hard disk and other such peripherals. The main suspects will be your SMPS, motherboard or processor. Try replacing the SMPS first.

There is another thing I would like you to try. Create a boot disk and boot into command prompt. Leave the system running? Does it switch off automatically in this case?

Answer 2

I agree with Bobby, it's heat - It's intermittent 'cause it's likely the CPU overheating only when it's gets over a certain usage threshold? Boot into the BIOS and see what the temperature reading is?