sooo lost...

When you say it restarts, do you mean it just turns off without warning and reboots?

How much RAM does your system have? Do you have that information?

It's either going to be a hardware or a software problem so the trick is going to be finding out which it is. So, if I was dealing with such a problem for someone I'd want to eliminate SW as the cause and move forward from there. And that means doing a full recovery.

After all, if it's 4 years old, been used for games and Internet, and never been recovered, that would be a doubly-good starting point.

yes, but it doesn't shutdown properly, it just goes to a black screen, then reboots.

RAM 512MB

how do i do a full recovery?

i really appreciate your help :)

Bear in mind it will wipe your hard drive, so you'll lose everything, but it will at least tell you if it is a HW fault or not....

Was your machine supplied with a set of restore disks?

might i suggest shutting off the auto restart to see a blue screen error message.
right click on mycomputer go to properties /then advanced /then setting in the startup and recovery section and uncheck automatically restart,

then when it erros you ahould get a blue scree of death error,it would look somethin like this ,write down the error # and post it here .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Windows_XP_BSOD.png

well, i shut that feature off yesterday. now i get a blank grey screen. :sad: when i did get that screen (last week sometime), i remember something about stop 000005 (not sure how many 0's) but there were two other #"s that i can't remember.

about the restore disks... if it did come with a set, they're long lost by now. this computer was brought out of storage recently. but until about a week ago, it seemed to be working fine:-|

If it was the 50 error it can be due to drivers or hardware. And to eliminate SW you are going to have to do a recovery.

Now, the Pavilion 420 sold in the UK has a HDD-based recovery system and you access that by tapping F10 when you turn the computer on. It should then boot from the recovery partition and into the recovery program assuming that the partition is not corrupt in any way. I am assuming that the A420N is the same as the 420.

You should see a Window which says Non-destructive Recovery. To prove what you need to prove here you have to choose Advanced Options and then choose the Destructive Recovery or Quick Format option (whichever it says).

If it says anything about Windows own repair feature, click YES to continue with the recovery anyway. Windows Restore won't fix this problem if it does turn out to be a SW issue.

Oooh. And it doesn't matter that it was working a week ago. It isn't working now and that's what matters ;)

Remember that it will wipe the drive completely of your personal data.

when you say it will lose everything... does that mean i'll lose windows xp too? because i don't have a disk for that either :sad: i understand that any games, photos, & other saved info will be lost, but i have another computer (same prob with that one) with nearly the same stuff on it, so it won't be lost forever untill i try to fix that one. would it be better to bring it in on an extended warranty to be fixed? i know that by tampering with it too much myself the warranty will be void.

No, the recovery puts Windows and all the original programs that came with your machine back on.

It will not put back your music, photos, documents, or any other stuff you personally have put on the machine.

But, whoa!

It's under warranty????? :eek:

Get your moneys-worth and get THEM to sort it for you. Seriously.

some how I dought it will be covered by warranty,unless it is hardware problem

She seemed to say it was under extended warranty in her last post.

would it be better to bring it in on an extended warranty to be fixed?

When we (at work) are dealing with these things under our extended warranty we assume it is HW unless a) obviously not or b) until proven otherwise. And a machine which restarts on its own could quite easily be HW. At the very least she will have tech support via telephone to diag it 1-2-1. Much better than trying to do it on forums with the delays and various alternative suggestions.

At the very least they should talk her through the recovery which she clearly isn't familiar with.

thank you both so much! i now intend to take it in on the warranty, i just wanted to see if there was a simple way to fix it myself :) hopefully they can fix the problem. your help has been greatly appreciated!

Since you said that the comp restarts when under load, I'm inclined to think that this is a heating issue. Try running the computer with the side open and a fan blowing air inside it. If the restarts stop, then it's definitely a heating issue and you need to add a few more fans in it. Also, if the system has dust in it, try cleaning that out too...