hi, i put together my pc a while ago so it's not the newest the best but works for me. components are: -p4 mobo from pcchips M950 -p4 2.53 Ghz 533MHz fsb -two 1GB sticks of memory by patriot -120 GB Seagate ultra ata/100 -160 GB seagate ultra ata/100 -DVD burner from Sony -DVD reader from samsung -Radeon x700 pro AGP -floppy -pci wifi -pci fire wire -cpu fan -system fan so how many watts should my ps have, because right now i have 300 watt power supply and my computer started to shut down randomly, it's not like the computer suddenly goes blank, windows xp shuts down like as if i was shutting it down but with out my intervention. this happens when when i'm just browsing internet and listening to music, it's not like i'm using all the resources like when playing games. also my 160GB hdd has only like 10GB free but system hdd which is 120GB has 80GB free. HELP please!!
I don't know if the PSU is the problem, or not, but I would suspect that your computer is under powered. I would not have less than a 450W PSU in my computer. I have a 550W PSU in my main computer.
so yesterday i was pretty upset so i decided that i will reinstall my xp. i figured that it has to be an os problem since i have been running my pc in the above configuration for quite a time and problem appeared 2 day ago. so i backed up all my files onto my maxtor 1TB external hdd, and then deleted stuff form my computer hdd that was almost full. and guess what, my computer didn't shut down for 11 hours, but this doesn't mean anything yet. will see today how it goes. in the mean while i wanted to know if 160GB hdd that is 90% full will consume more power than 160GB hdd that is only 50% full??
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp your psu should just about be ok but i would personaly like a bigger model myself if that was my system.
update: after posting previous post my computer decided to shut itself down. and did it again after i tried to post another post. in both cases machine was working for 30 minutes or so. any ideas will be welcome, keep in mind that i had the above configuration for quite a while and this problem just appeared two days ago, my initial thought was that this might have been caused buy the microsoft malicious removal tool for April 2007 since the problem occurred after windows update. i did however do the system restore to the date before that update from M$ but that didn't help so that's why i was asking about the power because it might be a hardware problem. any troubleshooting steps would be welcome.
well it is dusty but not as much that it will case lack of air flow and overheating. i don't think computer ever goes over 60 Celsius and that's in extreme cases. right now cpu is running at 35 to 45 Celsius, and i decided to take out one stick of ram. i don't know why but i think this is an os problem that was triggered by the M$ malicious removal tool, but that's only me. i don't have time to reinstall the os so there it goes. right now the computer is running for over 4 hours on one stick of ram, but it ran for over 11 hours on both sticks until i turned it off and problem came back in the morning.
problem solved so i was taking out the sticks of ram t see if any of them was bad, but that didn't help and deep down inside i never thought that this is a hardware problem. i decided to scan registry with TweakNow RegCleaner Std and clean the unnecessary entries. that didn't help! but then i read somewhere about XP Repair Pro 2007 so i decided to acquire that program and see what happens. well this little program found so many errors that it blew me away. after i chose to fix all the problem with system shutting down was gone. thanks to xp repair pro i saved some time and didn't have to reinstall my os. thank to all for help, hopefully problem will never reappear.
