The computer I built keeps restarting randomly after a brief period of use. I have already determined that my graphics card, cpu, power supply, hard drive, and motherboard are working properly. What is going on? Any solutions? Could it be the RAM that is damaged? Btw, heat levels have always stayed at reasonable temperatures, so I don’t think that’s an issue.
Is the reset button stuck?
Does your system also have this behavior in safe mode?
I will have to check the reset button again but it doesn’t seem to be stuck. Yes this also happens in safe mode.
If you turn off automatic restarts (In XP, head to My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, then clear the checkbox next to Automatically restart) you’ll have a chance at seeing any blue screen errors.
you can’t say that if you are having problems like this. to what you’ve seen and for some major symptoms this might be true.
your power supply or motherboard or cpu could all do something to reset. a microscopic bad connection in a switch, socket or in a circuit board trace could all happen.
I had this problem years ago (so take with a grain of salt) – a defective (cheapo) keyboard turned out to be the problem. It had been typing things that I did not type (really! like numbers in the middle of words), and apparently occasionally some secret shutdown command. Replaced the KB and all was well. Still using the replacement, for that matter.
Faulty ram could also be the problem. Have you tried to run the computer with only one of the ram modules in at a time?
This is the first logical step
if you get the machine to display a “Blue Screen of Death” that screen will have some codes we can use to help you further.
Random restarts can be from a variety of hardware and software problems, I am curious how you determined all of those components are good since many of these things cannot be decisively tested without a pile of known working replacement parts and or utilizing some very specialized software.
Have you scanned for virus problems with a different program than you normally use like malwarebytes or combofix2?
How long does the system stay running 2 min, 2 hours, no pattern?
Since you just built it, you could very well have a glitchy component. New does not guarantee perfect and electronics fail early most often.
I’ve had this happen. There was some oxidation on the Molex terminals on the cable from the power supply to the motherboard. The cable looked fine to the naked eye, but a restart occurred at seemingly random times especially when the cable was touched. The problem went away with a new cable.
In cases like this, I like to toss in a live CD to rule in/out the installed OS.
RAM is a very likely culprit. Download and burn the MemTest x86+ boot disk and run it for a few hours. It’ll tell you if anything is wrong.