 | By Fred Langa When your PC restarts without warning, it’s a clear sign that something is very, very wrong. These days, there are two primary reasons for spontaneous reboots — and both are fixable. |
Vista PC quits and restarts with no warning
Ken Blan’s note was succinct, but it suggested a major problem with his system:
- “I’m running Vista Ultimate on an HP desktop with 8GB of RAM and a 750GB hard drive. Every so often, the PC reboots without direction. Please help.”
The NT-derived varieties of Windows — including 2000, XP, and Vista — do a much better job of shielding the OS’s critical functions from badly behaving software. It’s actually rather rare — although not impossible — for current Windows versions to freeze totally or reboot spontaneously due to a software error.
However, failing hardware is more commonly at fault for such problems these days. For example, if your power supply’s output drops below a certain voltage threshold, you’ll get what engineers call an “uncommanded restart.” That’s not the kind of problem that any operating system can prevent.
In addition to spontaneous reboots, excessive heat also causes data errors and other intermittent problems. In the worst cases, long-term overheating will cause a PC or laptop to literally cook itself to death. This is another failure no OS can prevent.
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