Hmm... sounds like a bad problem. We need more information to diagnose it though. Operating System, amount of ram, processor, software that runs in the background... etc...

okay
os is xp pro
256 megs of ram
800 celeron processor
don't really know the software. i know he has norton antivirus 2002 always running though.

Heres my suggestion... 97.1% (that was a random guess) of all "out of the blue" restarts are caused by software programs coliding. My sugestion would be going to start -> run, and typing "msconfig" (without the quotes), and going to the startup tab, and unchecking anything that you don't really need running. Also, Windows XP might be restarting your computer when an error occurs. To turn this feature off, right mouse click on my computer and go to properties, go to advanced tab, click on system recovery, unclick automatic restart.

Hope this helped.

two more things.
1 it does it in safe mode also
2 i already unchecked what you mentioned and it still has the problem

i'll try the msconfig thing but as it's 11 oclock here and i don't have my friends computer, cant till tomorrow. thanks though

Go to My Computer and click Device Manager. Press alt-* (together) so that all of the branches expand. Look for any ? or ! and post any if there are. You may have an IRQ/DMA conflict (hardware conflict).

Maybe they're running on an AOpen motherboard ant it can't supprot all the work....


<explination of "supprot">
I bought an Aopen Mobo a while ago, and on the back of the box was printed "Supprots DDR SDRAM"...the mobo was horrible. It kept failing and randomly restarting until it got to the point that you couldn't turn it on wihtout a myriad of system beeps occuring every 4 seconds or so. I attempted to call the tech support number, but the line was disconnected. I eventually had to use 555-1212 to get the corporate office in Maryland, and even then, the tech support consisted of a voicemail system, which was of no help since no one responded my call. Eventually, I got an RMA from newegg.com, the people i bought it from, but didn't manage to get a box from fedex to send it back with :F
</explination>

You say that it gives this problem under multiple environments? What do you mean by that? Has the system ever ran Linux? Win2000, WinXP, etc etc?

A lot of times problems with random restarts are either related to bad memory (RAM) or the video card drivers. (I've experienced this due to both).

i have a compaq 6024 us and if you press the power button once it shuts down i dont know if he has it sets it restart when the butotn is pushed but something in his work area might keep pushing the button and restarting it so if that IS the prob right click on desktop go to properties go to screen saver tab click power click the advanced tab and under power buttons have it do nothing

I completely forgot to give you guys a follow up post here. Sorry about that. It doesn't happen to him anymore. I think it's because he got a new video card a while back (geforce 4 mx). I've had problems with video cards causing restarts before...
Thanks for all the help I would have got and sorry I cant tell you what fixed it for sure but just didn't want to let anyone else waste their time posting. Well, maybe not a complete waste of time cause someone else might need it but whatever. Sorry.