"Lorne" wrote in message
...
XP home, fully updated.

What can cause a computer to shut down without warning?

If it doesn't attempt to restart, it's hardware failure.

In many cases, it's overheating, and that can rapidly lead to non-repairable
damage.

In other cases, specific components such as the power supply or memory have
developed problems.


I have run memstest86 but the RAM is all OK. Also run a total virus scan
using McAfee (which has always been installed and running) but no virus
was found. No new hardware has been added recently. And I have not
noticed that I was doing anything that could be a common cause of the
shutdowns - they seem to be random and sometimes allow me to work all day
and other times it shuts down after 5 minutes.

I have noticed that I regularly get a disabled desktop waring saying there
was an error 'object doesn't support this action' in line 65 of
desktop.htt but it is the same desktop I have always used and it loads
fine in FrontPage.

Any ideas what to look for next?

First, ensure that your backups are current.

Unfortunately, diagnosing exactly which components are failing is difficult,
which is pronounced "expensive". It's hard to tell without replacing the
component, and it's quite possible that the problem exists in more than one
component.

-pk