Yes. Please give us some information to work with: make and model of your computer, operating system, RAM, what you are doing when it stops.

And please clarify: is it a true power outage, such as in every things off? Or does the system just crash? There is a difference.

 

hi joannie

I'm guessing by "switching off", you mean that the power to the computer is being cut. By your post I'm guessing that your power supply is failing. Please do reply to Bobbye's request for more info though in case you did mean something else.

Spyder_1386

 

switching off

Hello Bobby & Spyder,

What happens is I'll switch the computer on and after about 15/20 minutes it'll just shut down. The only way to start it up again is to turn the plug switch off for about 30 seconds and it'll come back on. It just about let me work my way through the do's & don't's of Techspot before posting yesterday before it went off. But after that after starting it up again it went off 3 times within 10 minutes. But then ended up staying on for a couple of hours.

To the model of computer, I'm afraid you'll probably say it's had its day, it's 4 years old, an e-machine, windows xp

I've taken the back off and cleaned the fan and removed all dust. I've also restored it back to factory settings, nothing seems to work. Perhaps it's just too old now, but at the present time I can't afford to buy another one, any help to keep it going for awhile will be much appreciated.

RAM 128 - and when it has stopped it's just a blank screen with no power, as stated I have to switch plug off for approx. 30 secs.

Thank you both.

 

Okay, you do not have enough RAM so when it's used up, the system is going to freeze. When you restart, you are freeing up the RAM-until it's used up again. You should have at least 512MB to run Windows XP. I have a 7 year old desktop with Windows XP and I added RAM years ago, up to 512MB.

You could get another stick of memory and keep using the system. Go to this site download the scanner. Then type your computer make and model in. It will scan the system and tell you what type of memory it needs. But you need more info than just "it's 4 years old, an e-machine, windows xp."

To get this info: Control Panel> System> General tab> look for Model #

Confirm please: the power goes out. There are NO lights on the monitor, peripherals, keyboard, modem? The description is still not clear. You could be having a problem with the power source as mentioned, but I don't know just what "switch plug off" means. When you 'power cycle' a modem or router, you do disconnect the cables, leaving the power source off for a few seconds. But the system is actually ON before you do that even though it freezes.

 

Model: 160/360 Intel(R)Celeron(TM) CPU - 1300 MHz 1.30 GHz 128 RAM

Red lights on modem stay on, standby light on monitor & light on speaker stays on. Keyboard lights off.

With turning plug back on. I should have said I have to turn the plug socket off then back on after 30 secs to get the on button on the computer to work.

At the back of computer there's two mesh like covers, one gets fairly warm, but the other doesn't, I think the fan is the cold one, it seems to be working ok, it doesn't make a whirring noise as it sometimes did before I cleaned it out

Hope this is explains a bit more. Sorry if it's still not enough but I'm not that clever with the technical side of things.

Thank you