Windows xp. occasional / regular crashing

Dear all,

I have been looking through your advice columns to see if anyone else is suffering from sudden shutdowns with Windows x.p ( s.p. 2 )

The computer suddenly clicks off and then reboots. This can happen at any time, though 50% is when I have first logged onto the Broadband internet server ( aol ).

I recently had my computer 'bombed' by a single package of virus / hacker input , this bypassed my Norton antivirus, and was recieved from e.bay .

Whilst trying to get rid of this, I recieved the exact same nasty package from an internet ' repair ' site .( Bypassing my new Mc Afee antivirus.

I now have the free Avira antivirus, and can well recommend it.

I am no expert, but am confident that I have now cleared all these bugs from my computer.

My friends tell me that the crashing is caused by my computer being overloaded.. yet I have 72% free memory?

I cannot find anything wrong with the computer, all my diagnostics and scanners give a clear bill of health.

I have just read on the interweb about a problem being investigated with regard to crashing computers. This seems to have come from a recent virus that has been blocked, but still causes Windows to crash, but the information has not been made public yet.

Any advice gratefully recieved.

When you are saying that it "clicks off and then reboots," do you mean that you hear strange clicking from the inside of your machine followed by a reboot?

If this is the case, it almost certainly means that you have a physical error on your HDD, which is unrepairable. Unfortunately, this will only get worse, to the point where your OS cannot even load up before the system reboots again. My suggestion would be to get a new HDD and transfer all of the data you wish to save over to the new HDD.

I had this happen before and it's a royal pain to deal with. Luckily, storage is wicked cheap these days.

Hi Myke,

Thank's for the information.

The computer just switched off without any warning and then rebooted. This could be whilst on standby or whilst on the internet. I could not pin it down to any particular time either, as it would run happily for day's and then have a sudden 'attack.'

This morning, a friend advised loading and running... advanced windows care from Download.com.

I have done this and.... touch wood, the computer has been fine all day.

My only problem being that the above program knocked out my antivirus, even though I instructed to ignore it.

Small price to pay if it has cured the problem.

Thought that I should add.. in case other people recieve the same bug package as described above, how I got rid of it.
The bug worked by disconnecting my antivirus ( Norton and then McAfee) from the computer.

I was blocked from restoring the computer, and then began to recieve erroneous ( but convincing) updates from aol, microsoft and Norton.( my formats). At first, these were choice installations, but then went to auto install.

I then downloaded Avira antivirus, the A.squared free scanner and pc doctor. Though my computer was running slow and I appeared to be being prevented from downloading antivirus / repair downloads.

Having isolated everything,( messenger, explorer, hp update , msn etc.) I used Avira, A.squared and pcd, to semi destroy the bug and then spent many hours manually picking out any files relating to the dates of infections.

Hope this helps.