Say i am using my computer for the last hour or so and decide to restart or (turn off and start again) 95% of the time the computer restart and ask me for my user name to log in, when I try to log in , it takes a while (say 10-20 sec ) before I see my desk top and while still in the process of completing the start up , the computer shuts off unexpectedly.(still power is on). I briefly saw an error message says " cannot load power (something)" before it shuts down and cannot clearly see what is that (something) possibly some file extension like .dll,but not sure. 5% of the time it will not even restart ,just shuts down on its first attempt to restart not even giving me the log in window.No matter how many times I try restarting this pattern persists, but if I LET THE COMPUTER " COOL DOWN" FOR SAY HALF AN HOUR THEN I have no problem logging in. I recently had a " about blank " hijacker and removed it using CWShredder. In my computer MS service pack 2, Spybot S& D, CWShredder,Mozilla and IE are all installed. Please help me to solve this problem, Thanks (is this due to overheating? but I never had this prob before the home page hijack)

Coincidences do happen, so it's best not to rule out possibilities too early in the game. Some of what you've described could indicate overheating, especially since you said that leaving the machine off for a bit seems to stabilize things.

Some basic things to check in terms of thermal/hardware problems:


- Make sure there's no dust buildup on the circuit boards or in the fans and air vents. If there is, buy a can of compressed air and blow the dust out.

- Make sure that all of the computer's fans are running smoothly. Check fans on the CPU, in the power supply, and possibly on the video card. If a fan has failed entirely or doesn't seem to be rotating freely, it should be replaced ASAP.

- Check the heat-sink on the CPU and make sure it is seated properly and securely.

- Check that all circuit boards and cables are firmly seated into their connectors.


If it's a software problem, here are some things to try:

By hitting the F8 key as your system is booting (right at the point where Windows first starts to load) you can bring up the startup menu, which has a few boot options which can be helpful in diagnosing boot/shutdown problems. From the menu:

- Boot the computer into Safe Mode. Does it operate correctly in Safe Mode, or does the problem still occur?

- Boot using the "Last Known Good Configuration" option. Does the problem still occur?

- Boot using the "Enable Boot Logging" option. This will create a log file named "ntbtlog.txt" which will contain entries listing what drivers Windows attempted to load at bootup. By looking through that log (open it with Windows Notepad) you may be able to determine where in the boot process something fails.

- You may not have gotten all of the "spyware" off your system, and malicious programs definitely can cause random shutdowns/reboots/freezes.

*Run a full virus scan, making sure that you've installed the most current virus definition updates to your AV program.

*Download and Run Ad Aware in addition to SpyBot (use the "check for updates" options to make sure Ad Aware has its current definitions). If Ad Aware finds things that SpyBot does not, have Ad Aware fix whatever it finds.

*Read through the threads in our Security forum for more information about detecting and removing malicious infections.