Troubleshooting Random Reboots

Troubleshooting a Random reboot or shutdown can be very frustrating, Sometimes you will see your computer getting restarted or shutdown automatically without any warning. This is a frustrating scenario when you are working on some important stuff and your computer restarts without any notice. Of course this is an improper restart or shutdown and may damage your computer’s hardware like Hard Disk or may damage your Operating System like Windows. This is a common problem in old computers specially PCs i.e. computers running on Windows OS. But there may be different reasons for this common problem. Here are some of the reasons which may cause frequent auto restart or shutdown of your PC.

First steps for troubleshooting a random reboot or shutdown

Virus or Malware – Your computer is infected with virus or malware. Source of the virus or malware may be your Internet connection (if connected) or any storage device recently connected to your system. Storage device like Flash Drive, CD, Hard Disk etc may bring viruses from other computers if they are used outside.
Loose Connection of Hardware Cables – If your computer is old say about more than 3 years and showing the frequent restart symptom then you should check the cables of your computer. Check the cable of Hard Disk connecting to motherboard and also check the RAM slots whether RAM is properly inserted. In case of loose RAM, your CPU box will lay a beep sound. Check the power cable connection coming from SMPS to Motherboard as well.
Dust on board – If your CPU box is not packed properly, then you may see to much dust on motherboard. Use a air blower to clean dust inside of CPU box.
CMOS Battery – On motherboard, you can find a round shape battery inserted. Which is nothing but CMOS battery to power your system clock and other stuff as well. If you system is too old or you have not changed the CMOS battery since last 1 or 1.5 years, then that may cause frequent restart.
Excess heat/temperature inside PC – Motherboard, Processor, Hard Disk area should be cooled properly by using fans. If you CPU box is having only one fan or you have placed the box in a very congested area then that may increase the temperature inside the box which will cause restart.

How To Solve Restart or Shutdown Problem?

To solve this problem, you should follow below mentioned steps,

Step 1. Change the CMOS battery on your motherboard
Step 2. Clean the motherboard, Cable Slots of Hard disk, RAM Slots, CD Drive Slot etc inside the CPU box
Step 3. Attach one more fan inside the box to exhaust the hot air from inside the box to outside
Step 4. Install a good Anti-Virus program on your system and run full system scan. Checkout free versions of good Antivirus or Internet Security programs
Step 5. In case your systems is still restarting frequently then go ahead and format the hard disk and install a fresh copy of operating system

Now your computer should not restart even after running huge applications. But if your system is not having much RAM, then it is not recommended to install bulky applications like Adobe.