The Digital Surgery (computer questions/problems here)

[Big Boy]

Thanks laser - I'll bear that in mind if the shop cock up - they've already got it.

[dtaai-maai]

In the last couple of days my PC has been rebooting itself every few hours for no apparent reason. I've checked connections (though it's a reboot not a shutdown) and run scans, but found no problems. Any ideas?

PC specs for those in the know: LITEON Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU 540 @ 3.07 GHz 4GB RAM

It's 5 years old and gets a lot of use on a daily basis. Is it time to start thinking about an upgrade...? (I hope not!)

[buksida]

Check that the CPU fan is running, overheating processors are often the cause of rebooting.

You may as well test the RAM also: http://www.memtest86.com/

[laser]

@ dtaai-maai

There many possible hardware reasons, like overheating/too much accumulated dust on the fans, loose power plug/cable/card contacts, overloaded power supply, faulty/too many periferals, electricity brownouts, motherboard (usually capacitors), memory, and even hard disk problems, as well as various software issues.
Check your setting in System/Advanced/Start Up and Recovery and uncheck "Automatically restart" that often prevents seeing the last BSOD/error message, if there's any. The best info for diagnosis may come from the event logs. Use Event Viewer (under Computer Management) and look for the last critical error(s).

[Big Boy]

Thanks laser - I'll bear that in mind if the shop cock up - they've already got it.

All back and running fine. Thanks again anyway

[laser]

@BB
That's good news and you're welcome.
I'd add that there might be inaccessible or broken emails even if Outlook does not warn you. I used this small utility to back up my workplace Outlook emails:
http://www.wizbrother.com/outlook2chm/index.html
That was convenient plus the conversion report also showed which email message failed to open or lost its attachment.

[dtaai-maai]

Check that the CPU fan is running, overheating processors are often the cause of rebooting.
You may as well test the RAM also: http://www.memtest86.com/

There many possible hardware reasons, like overheating/too much accumulated dust on the fans, loose power plug/cable/card contacts, overloaded power supply, faulty/too many periferals, electricity brownouts, motherboard (usually capacitors), memory, and even hard disk problems, as well as various software issues.
Check your setting in System/Advanced/Start Up and Recovery and uncheck "Automatically restart" that often prevents seeing the last BSOD/error message, if there's any. The best info for diagnosis may come from the event logs. Use Event Viewer (under Computer Management) and look for the last critical error(s).

Thanks to you both.
The fans are working properly, but I removed the side of the tower and it was very dusty inside! I've sorted most of that with a hairdryer (and an open window!), so I'm hoping that will do the trick.
Have also unchecked "Automatically restart" as suggested. Event viewer shows 3 Event 41 Kernel-Power critical problems in the last 24 hours. I've searched this on Google:



https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2028504

I'm hoping the dust was the problem...

[Khundon1975]

Ive been using Avast free version for a while now and never had any complaints until a couple of months ago.
We have very hi speed fiber optic internet and wireless router and we invariably have IPhone, IPad and my laptop on the go at the same time.
Lately, the speed that pages loaded on the Laptop slowed dramatically and watching YouTube videos was a nightmare.

Did not think it could be due to Avast, so looked elsewhere, with no clue as to the cause.

Then, I looked at Avast and spotted that the latest version had changed and added "surf protection" or some such thing!

So I decided to uninstall Avast and go back to the Windows defender and firewall. The speed of downloading pages and watching videos ETC, went back to the high speeds I was used to.

Anyone else had this when using Avast?

I'm not happy putting my trust in Windows, but at the moment, Avast is not doing it for me.

[Khundon1975]

Sorry, surf protection is on my Advanced System Care software.

Either way, my Laptop is much faster without Avast. Don't know why!

[Dannie Boy]

I have the Avast Premier paid for protection and the speed seems fine to me.

[Khundon1975]

Dannie Boy Thanks for that.

My Avast was the free one, which has always been good, but as I mentioned over the last month or so, it seems to be slowing everything down on my laptop. When I got rid of it, everything returned to normal!

A bit weird really, it was almost as though Avast was strangling my internet download and upload speed.
I will have to look at another one such as AVG, although I used that years ago and had trouble with it.

Maybe it's just me.

[buksida]

I'm still using the free version of Avast, the surf protection that you mention is an add-on so simply un-select it along with all the other crap when you install the AV software. Just install the bare bones basic antivirus.

You may also want to look at your browser for page load slowness, Firefox and particularly that damned Flashplayer has been very problematic recently.

I just did two identical page load tests on HHF using http://tools.pingdom.com

Firefox = 5.36s
Chrome = 2.59s

Bit of a difference eh?

[Khundon1975]

buksida Thanks for that link.

Just tried it on my Firefox browser for HHForum. This is from the UK.
Load time
2.13s UK
1.74 New York.

So it is not my FF slowing it down. May be Flash player, but I usually keep that disabled, unless I need it.



Edit to show second speed test.

[dtaai-maai]

Thanks to you both.
The fans are working properly, but I removed the side of the tower and it was very dusty inside! I've sorted most of that with a hairdryer (and an open window!), so I'm hoping that will do the trick.
Have also unchecked "Automatically restart" as suggested. Event viewer shows 3 Event 41 Kernel-Power critical problems in the last 24 hours.
I'm hoping the dust was the problem...

Well, more than 2 days later and no repeat of the problem.

Hopefully that's done and dusted (if you'll pardon the pun...).

[Khundon1975]

Thanks buksida I will give that a go.