Computer shutting down?
One Became Five
Posts: 269
My girlfriends computer shuts down after being on the internet for five minutes time and time again. It goes to a screen that says start in safe mode and when I attempt to restart it doesn't. Is it a virus? Any ideas? Thank you for any help.
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Is it booting up at all? Where does it hang? Does it keep rebooting?
It could be, a software issue, but only if it's actually turning on and running for a while. Most likely a hardware issue, it could be a fan, processor, power supply, motherboard, memory, video card, wall outlet, telephone jack, just about anything. So I need more information.
Is there a dialog that reads "Your system will shut down in # seconds" or anything? That would be a virus. Tell me exactly what happens step by step and I can help.
Thank you so much for the help. I haven't tried her computer in a few days, but this is what I remember. There is no dialog that says your computer will shut down in #seconds, I am sure about that.
It does boot up. After about five minutes on the internet the screen begins to break up, it appears like the cord isn't tight from the monitor to the back of the computer, but it is. After that a blue screen appears, and it says something, I'm not sure what though, I'm sorry for not knowing more. I do know that there are messages on the top of the screen that have underscores between them, I don't remember what they say, as they are different each time.
At this point the screen goes black and it says to reboot, in safe mode, in normal mode, etc, and then it keeps trying to reboot and doesn't. She has to turn the computer off, wait and then turn it on. At that point the process repeats.
Thank you so much for your help!!
I'm getting that it only happens after being connected to the internet?
By any chance, is the internet connected by a USB device?
It could be a faulty USB device. One of my PCs won't boot with USB devices plugged in, it just keeps rebooting. It could also be a defective PCI Ethernet Card. Or, most likely, a corrupted windows installation.
It kicks her off also while she is using microsoft works. Not sure if that tells you anything?
I'm not sure if the internet is connected by USB? I do know that there is an ethernet plug that goes from the computer to the modem?
It's probably not connected by USB. That's pretty rare.
It doesn't sound like it's a faulty NIC either. Try disconnecting all USB devices and booting it up. If that doesn't work, it's probably a corrupt windows installation. Try starting in safe mode, if that doesn't work, try "last known good configuration" form the same menu, you might try that a few times because of the way windows tracks changes. If nothing else works, you'll probably have to reinstall windows or format and reinstall.
However, it could be a worm too...the best way to test this would be to start the computer without an internet connection, and use it for a while. If it doesn't restart for a while without an internet connection, then run whatever anti-virus scan is on there, and turn on the firewall if it has one.