Trying to get my GF's pc up and running..its like 4-5 year old compaq presario running xp.

She had someone try and fix it awhile ago because it kept restarting on its own. you get to home screen and just about everything loaded before it crashes, blinks BSOD for a split second and then restarts.



I ran chkdsk..said they were no bad sectors, took me a couple of tries to get into cmd it kept freezing off from boot.



I'm running recovery to see if its some sort of software thing..I dunno..i think thats what the last person did who tried to fix it.. i have a laptop and the desktop so i can't really play with the HD's but i'd appreciate any help..i'm stuck in the house from the damn storm so i guess this is my job for the day



help me arf..

Could be a variety of things. Overheating, bad power supply, bad RAM.

Try blowing the dust out first.

Burn and boot this CD
http://www.memtest86.com/download.html#R40a

It will run a test on the RAM. It takes a while

So i have to boot that CD from startup?



after the restore it seems to be working better i can actually connect to the internet and it hasn't crashed, now i'm scared to shut it off..
I popped the cd in while the pc was up and running windows but it just has some folders with mumbo jumbo..no .exe or anything



Edit: NVM, its running now.

Its a boot cd so yes you have to tell the computer to boot from it.

Umm..it says pass complete. no errors. press esc to exit but its still doing stuff..err...just let it go or will it run forever?

edit: after reading through the instructions i see there are 11 tests, i'm on 10





Appreciate the help fox, many thanks.



 

Two most likely culprits are excessive heat and failing power supply.  Open the case while the computer is running and make sure that CPU cooling fan is running.  If it is, try to remove heatsink and apply a new coat of thermal paste between CPU and heatsink.  If still no luck, try a different power supply.

Yes, both fans are running..but there is alittle fuzz between the fan and heatsink i didn't notice before..so i'll clean it out. it hasn't crashed once since the restore...i've been running that test and decrapping it..i almost hope it is the power supply thats something i could probably replace without destroying anything



 

the fact you got a bsod says it is software not hardware.
bad ps and heat don't give bsod's.

if the restore fixed it, you are probably good to go. if not, boot into safe mode and transfer your stuff off.

Actually... they do. Bad PS, heat, and hardware (RAM) cause execution errors. Unstable voltages in a PS cause bit errors and voltage sags can cause some hardware to power off momentarily. Heat causes increased resistance changes which also cause bit errors. This messes up code execution when memory, cache, or instructions are corrupted. Resulting in a jump to error recovery or debugging code which is the BSOD

<--- Computer engineer here

The memcheck will stress the system a little and search the ram for bad spots. If it didn't find any thats good. A spotty PS can be difficult for a person without the correct tools to diagnose. I would look into driver problems next. I usually have people run memcheck before they go through the trouble of messing with drivers.

I stand corrected.

however in all my years of dealing with pc's, laptops and servers, literally thousands of machines, I have never seen that happen due to bad hardware or cpu fan not running.