Computer restarting randomly

Today, I uninstalled a bunch of useless programs. Nothing important, just some trial versions for different DVD burning programs, that sort of thing. I don't know if that's relevent, but it's the only thing remotely system-y that I changed, and the problem started pretty much right after I did that.

Anyway, my computer, as you might have guessed, restarting without any warning, at seemingly random intervals. One second I'm doing stuff, the next I'm watching the computer boot up. No warning, no error messages. It's happened three times, so far, waiting intervals of about 10 minutes and a little under an hour. What I'm doing at the time seems to have no effect on it, all three times I was doing completely different things.

After the second time, I went and stopped all non-essential processes in the task manager. Didn't seem to do anything, though the interval did increase from about 10-15 minutes up, to almost an hour, as I said. Maybe that means something? Probably not.

Aside from the aformentioned uninstalls, I haven't changed a gosh darned thing. I wasn't doing anything particularly strenuous on the machine, at the times of any of the reboots (just winamp and firefox, pretty much.)

Any suggestions? Gotta post before it goes again. I'm going to bed, don't want these cold restarts to damage the system at all.

You are probably crashing and automatically restarting before you get a chance to see the message....see if this is helpful:

my computer -> properties -> advanced -> startup and recovery -> settings -> uncheck automatically restart

also might want to take a look at the event logs...

might be coincidence with the uninstalls, might not....this should give you more to work with though

Has your internet connection changed recently? Are you dial-up or broadband? Have you installed all of the MS security patches?

It sounds like a Sasser variant, but if you're up to date on patches that shouldn't be an issue.

Boot into safe mode and see how long your machine stays up. While you're waiting you can check your event logs.

Cleaned the dust from your system lately?

Faulty card?

Uninstall Starforce. (worked for me)

I'd try uninstalling all of the recently installed software, and then using System Restore to restore drivers to an earlier checkpoint. You can also try a mix of spyware / registry cleaning software to make sure no rogue things load up at startup.

By the way, is there any pattern to how long it takes before reboot? For example, I used to have an issue where my machine would reboot after ~1 minute when it was booted up for the first time during the day, but then less and less often as it warmed up. Turned out to be a hardware failure on the motherboard - probably a tiny short of one of the connectors, that disappeared when the material warmed up and expanded... Just a thought...

Well, knock on cyber-wood, the problem seems to have gone away. I've unchecked the auto-restart thing, but other than that, haven't run into any other problems. I don't THINK I have Starforce on my comp.

Funny thing. My brand spanking new computer did this exact same thing. This computer had about 6 hours logged into it before it started doing this. The resetting was getting so bad I wouldn't make to past the microsoft logo before the computer reset. There was no pattern at first, but then the time between resets started to get smaller and smaller. I wiped the HD, then reinstalled windows. That did nothing, mainly because the computer would reset while windows was installing.

Back in the box the computer went, and I am still waiting for a replacement.

Sounds like it could be one of a multitude of problems. I had a similar problem with a bad power supply. Replaced it and the problem stopped.

EDIT: Woo-hoo! I made Executive! Two-ply TP for everyone!

I had to replace the power supply on the new computer an hour after I had it (yes, that was 1 of the 6 hours it ran). The restarting problem happened after I downloaded some new drivers for my video card, or, at least, that is the last thing I did before the restarting problems began. I downloaded the drivers, installed them, restarted the computer, turned the computer off, then went to bed. The next day while I was playing Oblivion, the game froze, the dreaded BSOD briefly appeared, and that is when the fun started.

Sorry to hijack your thread Morrolan.

got a similar problem when my RAM was (semi-)dead, took me a few weeks to find this out.. a terrbile time that was

I recently had a random reset problem and I figured out it was my CPU overheating. I recommend installing a temperature monitoring program just to make sure it wasn't/isn't that.