Random Re-booting desktop HP--HELP!

[Shatinator]

Hello,

I own a HP computer Pavilion Elite HPE i7 core blu ray player and burner. Today it started it reboot by itself with out warning, over and over. Sometimes it was useable for 15-30 minutes and then would reboot by itself. This happened once weeks ago and then nothing until now.

Any clues please help!

 

[Gary7]

Have you tried booting it into safe mode? When the computer first starts, you should see an option to hit "ESC" for a boot menu. Then go into that and select to do SAFE MODE with NETWORKING. See if that helps. If it does, then you may have a faulty driver (perhaps video) or, you've gotten some unscrupulous virus.

Before this started happening, was there anything unusual or different that took place, like perhaps an unusually long Windows update?

Lastly, there are many ways to troubleshoot such problems. I strongly suggest visiting the "SevenForums.com", as they've got excellent troubleshooting tutorials as well as very helpful members who are often able to lend useful advice.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ It's F8 to get Windows boot options (like safe-mode)? The boot menu is usually about order of devices to boot from. Or are HP's really that back-asswards?

 

[MacLeod]

Yeah I thought it was F8 as well, one of my lap tops started to reboot crash to blue screen without warning. I ended up having to restore to out of the box.

 

[shapeshifter]

Has the heat sink/cooling fan been cleaned recently?

Just last week, mouse freezing requiring a reboot, or sudden random reboots every few minutes started occurring. I was puzzling over what it could be when the light bulb went on - it's overheating.

A thorough cleaning of all the cooling hardware fans/vents/slots, a fresh bead of thermal grease and problem solved. I was surprised when my tech-guy told me how often common PC issues are caused by lack of attention to cooling elements.

Warning, do not open your PC case if you don't know what you are doing. Take it to a shop for a cleaning.

 

[Venardhi]

Yeah, sounds pretty much exactly like overheating. Your cpu's heatsink has probably come lose and has limited or no contact.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Check you Event Viewer under Administrative Tools to see if there are any system error events popping up before it reboots.

 

[Venardhi]

Or just boot to your bios and see what temp your CPU is running at.

 

[Gary7]

^ It's F8 to get Windows boot options (like safe-mode)? The boot menu is usually about order of devices to boot from. Or are HP's really that back-asswards?

No, you are correct. F8 is used to get into the Windows boot menu for selecting things like SAFE MODE. ESC is used to get into the diagnostic menu for things like running hardware checks and editing the BIOS.


I didn't really flesh out my thoughts all the way. Here's what I would do:

• Hit the "ESC" button and then when presented with a menu, select what's available for hardware diagnostics in your computer. You should be able to run a test to validate various things like memory.
• When the computer is in this constant rebooting mode, try F8 to get to SAFE mode and see if it can fully boot. If it can't, then there's most definitely a hardware related issue going on.
• Does the computer feel like it's hot or uncomfortably warm? If so, perhaps it is overheating (although that's usually more of a problem for laptops than desktops). There could be a few causes for it, like compromised heat sink or decayed thermal contact material. Do you have a high powered graphics card installed?
• Let your computer sit for a few hours, then when you boot up and can get to the desktop, download a temperature monitoring utility. There are plenty of free ones available for download. When running, if your CPU or GPU is tending to jump above 90C, then it may very well be an overheating problem. You may have an option to control your inboard fan at the BIOS level--I'd select it to always be on.

 

[Venardhi]

The BIOS will have a temperature monitor in it, which is where any software would be getting it from. Just boot to the BIOS.

 

[Metryq]

This constant rebooting sounds like BATMAN syndrome.

 

[Gary7]

The BIOS will have a temperature monitor in it, which is where any software would be getting it from. Just boot to the BIOS.

Yes, that information could be retrieved in the BIOS, but it's rather inconvenient when you can have a system tray icon that is reporting to you the actual temperature moment to moment without the hassle of rebooting...
Here's one: Open source Temp Monitor

 

[Venardhi]

The BIOS will give you an idle temperature. If it is overheating in that state then you immediately eliminate all the software possibilities.