XPHome turns PC off then restarts randomly

Fresh Install of WinXP Home SP2, on an AMD 1700+ machine that had win98SE on
it. Windows .ini got corrupted, reformatted and loaded XP Home SP2. For no
apparent reason, the machine shuts off, as in goes directly to video screen
then BIOS etc., and restarts Windows after doing a checkdisk. Disabled
S.M.A.R.T. and it seems to last a bit longer, but still does the hard boot
thingy. I am suspecting Power Supply and/or Motherboard .... Any other
ideas/tips/tricks to try?

"2tall" wrote in message
news
Fresh Install of WinXP Home SP2, on an AMD 1700+ machine that had win98SE
on
it. Windows .ini got corrupted, reformatted and loaded XP Home SP2. For no
apparent reason, the machine shuts off, as in goes directly to video
screen
then BIOS etc., and restarts Windows after doing a checkdisk. Disabled
S.M.A.R.T. and it seems to last a bit longer, but still does the hard boot
thingy. I am suspecting Power Supply and/or Motherboard .... Any other
ideas/tips/tricks to try?

Another possibility for "random" restarts is bad memory. Get memtest from
he

http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

and run it. If it finds errors, you have a few possible courses of action.
If the system has more than one stick of RAM and can run with just one, shut
down and remove all but one and retest. If the RAM passes, shut down and
swap sticks and retest till you identify the bad one(s). When you find
all of these, you can try different BIOS settings that slow down memory
access, but you'll be still be subject to restarts due to errors.
Ultimately, you will need to just give up on the bad sticks and replace them
with good ones.

This problem can also corrupt files as they are being accessed.

HTH
-pk