Hi everyone. I was hoping someone out there could give me some input on what's going on with my machine. Randomly, without any warning, or pattern, my machine shuts down. It does not freeze before this happens, or give any warning whatsoever. It simply freezes. I can be (and have been) in the middle of projects when it just shuts off. It then takes maybe ten to twenty minutes for it to be able to start up again. When I try before it is ready, the computer runs, but the monitor does not turn on. I then have to shut it off on the back of the machine, then restart it later. Before, when it finally started after shutting down like this, it gave me an Overclocking Failed warning, though I haven't overclocked anything on my machine.

These are the specs on my machine. It's approximately two years old:

CPU - Intel Pentium 4 560
Motherboard - ASUS P5AD2 Premium
Case - Silverstone Nimiz SST-TJ03 (I've taken the sides off, because I thought it may be getting overheated, though I don't know this for sure)
PSU - PC Power and Cooling Turbo Cool 510 Deluxe Express
RAM x 2 - Crucial Technology (1024x2) PC-4200U DDR2/533
Primary Videocard - ATi Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition

I'm really hoping someone can give me an idea of what I can do to get my computer back to being reliable.

Thanks in advance,

-B

If it takes time for it to be able to start up again then overheating is certainly the first thing to look into.

Does your BIOS have a temperature monitor in it?

Does it shutdown if you leave it in BIOS with all your peripherals out? If it does, it is almost certainly a hardware or overheating problem.

If it is, you're looking at just cleaning the fan (if you're lucky) through reseating the heatsink, up to reapplying heatsink compound and reseating everything and getting a new heatsink and fan in the worst case (just one possible series of remedies based on the assumption about overheating).