StarDestroyer.Net BBS

My computer reboots itself sometimes even before it has a chance to fully boot. And when it does boot up fully the screen is half black and then it locks and I have to do a hard boot. Does any one have any ideas whats up?

It's knackered?

Can you get into safe mode? If so, go to the Event Viewer in computer management and look for errors where the source is listed as "System". They will give you a stop error. That will help to find out what is wrong.

I've heard of various corruption problems and malware that affect Windows that match the symtpoms you're reporting.

You can either screw around trying to fix it (adviseable if its a high-importance machine) or else, backup your data and do a reinstall.

If it's XP, it may be a BSOD and you just haven't enabled the error screen.

Google told me this in order to show them:
1. Select Start/Control Panel/System
2. Go to the Advanced tab and click on “Startup and Recovery”
3. Uncheck “Automatically restart”
4. Set the memory dump to “Small Memory Dump”

If it's not a BSOD, then my next guess would be a corrupted system followed by dead or dieing hardware, although considering the vagueness of the symptoms, I can't be sure that it fits.

Shot video card, shot RAM, malware, OS corruption, take your pick. You need to give that PC a thorough checking over.