Sony VAIO Desktop - Windows Home Edition Problems

[KugarWeb]

Hi there,

For a number of months now my Mum and Dad's computer has been playing up and randomly reseting itself, even when not being worked hard or getting too hot. For example, just now my Dad was typing out an email and had just sent it off and it switched off and flipped back to the Windows Startup screen. It doesn't appear to be related to any particular type of software either, since I have been able to multitask on it myself using Windows Media Player and a number of IE7 windows, whereas when my Mum or Dad have been on it, they have been using very little power from what I can gather, only using 1 IE7 window at a time and using Microsoft Outlook on the odd occasion.

The specification of the computer is as follows:

2002 Windows XP Home SP2
1.8Ghz Pentium 4 processor
1.2GB DDR SDRAM
64MB Geforce 4 MX440 Graphics Card
40GB HDD connected via IDE
DVD-Rom
CDRW

As you can probably tell this is an old machine (bought in 2003) and so is well out of it's warranty. Are there any replacement parts which need to be added to make it more stable or would it be best to do a complete rebuild of the system ie. reinstall Windows.

Cheers,

Andy.

[carnageX]

Could be a bad power supply? Do you have a spare one sitting around you could try out?

[EricB]

hit f8 like you are going to safe mode. disable automatic restart. Or Right click My Computer and click on Properties > Advanced > Start Up & Recovery Settings and uncheck "Automatically Restart". tell us the error code.