Problem with my computer

My computer is a pentium 4 2.53 ghz , 512 mb ddr ram ( i have another stick but not putting it in right now), anyway...

For the last few months my computer had been restarting complteley randomly, I have already put in fresh stick of ram, and a new dual 80mm 420 watt power supply, and now the computer has troubles even getting to the main windows screen. I have also reinstalled windows numerous times and it still does this, so this takes out the possibility of it being a virus. I talked to some kid in one of my classes and he said it was probably my cpu or my motherboard. So i was wondering if any of you guys have an idea on what the problem might be, or if you think I should just take out my hard drives and the new hardware i Purchased and beging building a new computer? Any replies are appreciated

 

I had the same problem but it was due to me overclocking my CPU to much and it was restarting every time windows started up, try going into the BIOS and reseting it to its defult settings and see if that makes any change.

 

ya... I tried running the system at the fail-safe defaults and the same thing happened. It has to be some sory of heating problem, but I really don't know much about computers.

 

Might vary well be, or a PSU going bad. But there also was a virus that would do the exact same thing a while back. Try doing a search on Symantec website/Norton Anti-Virus, for the particulars since the name of that virus escapes me.

 

the computer usually restarts at the time the windows main screen comes up if not before that

 

You said you re-installed windows. Did you reformat the hard drive first, and then do a fresh install or did you just re-install windows? What type of video card do you use also?

 

the problem the reformatting it is that i dont know the admin password and when i change it it still says it is incorrect... so does anyone know how to fix this