turns itself off suddenly and reboots (sometimes)

My WinXP SP2 Home has suddenly stated crashing, it shuts itself off instantly and reboots itself, sometimes it can come back up to the Win User Log-on screen, sometimes it just remains totally blank without booting up, and I have to push the power button to turn the computer's PCU on.

I had been using various anti-spyware stuff so I don't think it had anything bad left on it. I had Norton Systemworks on it and had Norton GoBack which I felt was making it run slow so I disabled that, and it started crashing, so I enabled it again, but it's still crashing.

Now the problem is, I can't keep my computer ALIVE long enough to
1.) remove any programs or add any new ones.
2.) run anti-spyware or system analyzing programs.
3.) re-install windows even! I tried to do that but I have SP2 on it and the CD I got with computer is only SP1 and won't let me use the CD, so I downloaded a supposed WIN XP home SP2 but when I used it, it hangs halfway through and shows me a Dr Dos black screen...

The computer will sit and not crash while I leave the Win User log-on screen but as soon as I choose any user and log on, it crashes within a few minutes, at different times and in different programs.

I've tried loading Windows on, line by line, but can't see anything making it crash. I can't get it to stay alive long enough to re-install Norton Systemworks or anything else that might help.....

I have an AMD chip 2200+, 512 ram, tons of hard drive space, All in Wonder video tuner card. Tabby

 

Hi, and welcome to MajorGeeks! From reading your post, it seems that enough information wasn't included for trouble shooting. What make and model computer are you using? You stated that the computer had SP2 on it, but the restore CD was only SP1.

Go to Control Panel/System/Advanced/Startup and Recovery and delete the check mark next to automatically reboot on error. This should give you a BSOD describing the error that is causing your problem. Please post back with this, and I'm sure that you will get help.

As a side note, you mentioned downloading a WinXp Home CD with SP2. As this isn't available for download from MicroSoft, to the best of my knowledge, and this explains the lack of replies. MajorGeeks doesn't support Warez. Hope this helped!

 

Well I got it to stay alive long enough to remove a program I had downloaded from Microsoft's website, a Match-up card game that had been the last thing I had loaded on, and now computer is fine.....grrrrr, hate MS.... what did you mean about warex? I do not know what that is. I got the WIN Xp Sp2 from a site like suripa or something that Merc from Spywarewarrior had listed to get when you have to reformat. Is it illegal? I have real Windows XP on my computers. Tabby

 

Sorry for the confusion reguarding my post! If you don't know what warez are then that's great. As for WinXP SP2 that could be a legit download, as this would be the service pack file itself. I misread your post and assumed that you had downloaded an XP cd iso. file with XP2 already installed and were trying to use it. My apologizies and glad to hear that you got your computer working!

 

Warez are pirated/cracked copies of software applications!