Why is my desktop shutting down (power off) on its own after an hour of operation?

This is what I've done:
1) reformatted hard disk and reinstalled OS
2) Scanned for virus
3) Cleaned the processor heat sink/fan. Reapplied new heat dissipation paste under the heat sink.

BTW, its a P4 processor, running on XP. Hope to get more leads as I'm running out of ideas. Cheers. Thx.

 

Maybe it is a temperature problem, causing the system to shut down automatically to cool down.

 

Hi,

Some thoughts, though ... xp/windows is not my forté/fav ...

You re-installed everything, so...exclude a virus (well, there is a debate werther windows itself is a virus but that aside). By the way, a modern virus will keep your system going, as shutting down is "leaving a trace" of its presence and it would disrupt it's own job.

The question is : who/what shuts the pc down? If it's the os, then you'll not get any restore messages at reboot, if it is the hardware (heat/electrical/...) the os would not have the time to cleanly unmount/shutdown and that would manifest itself in some parts of the system. In w98 (yes, it's that long ago I used windows) there was the disk check (blue screen) ...

A clue?

Luck!

Thor

 

Are you using the PC when it poweroff? the OS makes a shutdown or it looks like if you unplug the power? try to be a bit more specifyc pls

 

Its not software problem may be its due to hardware problem check the processor sit correctly or else it may due to motherboard problem

 

i think that you did n't paste well sometimes it happened. so i hope that if u re paste may be that will be help you out.

 

in case you didn't know this so have you tried to go into the power option cause there's option to set processor power management so by default the minimum set to 5% and maximum is set to 100% so i think there's a chance that cpu can't hold onto the 5% so increase the value to 8% and try to load something if system doesn't restart then wait for in idle state

 

shutting down (power off) on its own after an hour of operation?

Most of the times this problem occours when heat sinker is not attached properly and proccessor is getting heat up too much this could also damage your proccessor badly. Attach the heat sink properly with paste and make sure fan is working too.

 

With a machine that old you really have to include the power supply in the list of suspects as well as all the others listed above. If it is a straight "power off" type of shutdown, with no restart after it, then replace the power supply.

It sounds like a heat issue, and if it is a P4 with the original power supply, that PSU is getting towards 10 years old. Replace it and see what happens.

 

in case you didn't know this so have you tried to go into the power option cause there's option to set processor power management so by default the minimum set to 5% and maximum is set to 100% so i think there's a chance that cpu can't hold onto the 5% so increase the value to 8% and try to load something if system doesn't restart then wait for in idle state???

 

Verry old thread and about windows XP.... Locked..