Nearly not a merry xmas. computer dead.

the watchman

Woke up this morning and computer was dead!:eek:. I thought 'this won't be a happy Xmas lol.
I have a desktop which I keep permantly switched on. At night all I do is turn off the monitor. I have been doing this for about a year and believe it or not was today going to open up tower and give it a good clean as I thought that one day it might get too clogged up with gunk and overheat and stop working:)

I feel this is exactly what happened as there was no sign of a general power failure, monitor and printer etc still working.
Anyway I turned the on/off switch located at back of computer tower to 'off' then back 'on' again and and then pressed the start button on front and behold it fired up...phew!:D.

So could someone confirm to me please that it did actually over heat and shut down 'the power' itself in a safe way which allowed me to power back up as described earlier.
Would appreciate your thoughts please.
And I promise that I 'WILL' clean it out today and do it more regularly like a good little boy in the future.:D

Thanks and happy Christmas.

challengemaster

Check to see if other electronics might have also been turned off - could easily have been a minor power cut. I've often woken up to find the PC off and the only tell-tale is the digital photo frame I have

I'd say it's very unlikely that it overheated though

chin_grin

Can you check Event Manager to see if any errors popped up prior to the machine shutting down?

Should be in Admin Tools.

biko

Rather a "computer switched itself off, why?" thread.

Aye, vacuum it out - be careful and check event viewer.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427

You shouldn't leave it on all the time. Windows computers aren't as good as Unix boxes

the watchman

Thanks guys. I did have a look at 'event viewer' but didn't see anything that looked bad, however tbh I wouldn't be sure what to look for.

I still think it was not a mains power failure as other electronics equipment in the house usually shows signs of a power failure and there are none to be seen. And usually when there has been a power failure I can normally boot up again by just using the button on front of tower and not have to use the switch at the back.

Anyway I have cleaned inside the tower. look at the dirt found in two of the small spaces between the cooling fins on the proccessor: would that have caused a shut down.

cian1500ww

biko wrote: »

Rather a "computer switched itself off, why?" thread.

Aye, vacuum it out - be careful and check event viewer.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427

You shouldn't leave it on all the time. Windows sucks

FYP

challengemaster

biko wrote: »

You shouldn't leave it on all the time. Windows computers aren't as good as Unix boxes

Believe it or not, i've a windows install that would surprise you! Would give any unix box a good run...

Naikon

challengemaster wrote: »

Believe it or not, i've a windows install that would surprise you! Would give any unix box a good run...

Bet it has not been up for 5+ years without a reboot...:pac: Sure, you can even upgrade the kernel without a reboot using Ksplice. Wonder how long IBM Linux mainframes were last rebooted.

*cough - http://counter.li.org/reports/uptimestats.php*

challengemaster

Naikon wrote: »

Bet it has not been up for 5+ years without a reboot...:pac: Sure, you can even upgrade the kernel without a reboot using Ksplice. Wonder how long IBM Linux mainframes were last rebooted.

*cough - http://counter.li.org/reports/uptimestats.php*

I'd also be willing to bet that nothing up for 5+ years without a reboot doesn't have an uninteruptable power supply.

deceit

the watchman wrote: »

Thanks guys. I did have a look at 'event viewer' but didn't see anything that looked bad, however tbh I wouldn't be sure what to look for.

I still think it was not a mains power failure as other electronics equipment in the house usually shows signs of a power failure and there are none to be seen. And usually when there has been a power failure I can normally boot up again by just using the button on front of tower and not have to use the switch at the back.

Anyway I have cleaned inside the tower. look at the dirt found in two of the small spaces between the cooling fins on the proccessor: would that have caused a shut down.

Should never let that amount of dirt in the computer. It would be possible for that amount of dirt too make a pc overheat but i've only ever seen it happen in old p4's because of dirt.
Do you have anything running overnight that can put alot of stress on your cpu or could you have a virus as could do the same?
If you have heating on at night too combat the cold outside and say you have torrents (dont have torrents or any such program myself so dont know if they give problems) or some other program and decides too give problems and constantly use cpu 100% that could do it mixed with the dust.
My steam install has done this once or twice while downloading 10+ games on it and only way too stop it was too end its process