ok computer nerds, help me out.
The computer keeps shutting off out of nowhere, not off it's like the monitor goes into sleep mode or something out of nowhere and wont come back out.
I have to pull the power plug out and reboot everything, sometimes it'll load back up and sometimes do the same thing as windows is loading
a few times it's just frozen up while looking at something
once it said something on the screen about 'out of frequency range' and once something about the power supply to the video something or other being disconnected
then I pulled the power and loaded it back up and it's fine
I have not downloaded anything recently or even looked at any web pages I normally dont
WTF

it's just a regular ol dell PC running windows XP it's maybe 6 years old

it sounds like the monitor or the videocard is fuxored
a) if you have a videocard and an on-board videocard, try changing them in the bios (or ask for someone to do this)
b) try another monitor
c) try another videocard

Operating system?

Make and Model?

Virus protection?

How much porn, by weight, would you say is on the hard drive?

EDIT: At some point, I passed reading for comprehension... was all that info in the original post?

I think that the video card may be the problem. Have you removed the video card and reseated it in its slot? Is it a PCI based video card or is it soldered to the motherboard, I guess should have been the first question.

Good information to know would be:

Brand of Computer / Age
Operating system you are running

A flaky power supply would explain some of your symptoms.

dontfeartheringo wrote:Operating system?

Make and Model?

Virus protection?

How much porn, by weight, would you say is on the hard drive?

it's a Dell demension 4600
tons, have never had any issues
Zero

This might be the computer's last line of defense....







... against.....










... Cocorosie.

Benny wrote:it sounds like the monitor or the videocard is fuxored
a) if you have a videocard and an on-board videocard, try changing them in the bios (or ask for someone to do this)
b) try another monitor
c) try another videocard

how would such a thing that I don't understand happen to my trusty computer

Is the power supply making noises of any sort when you turn on the puter?

Is the inside of computer covered with dust? The power supply, is that caked in dirty crap as well?

Did you open it up and see if the video card is properly connected to the power supply? And just proberly connected to anything it needs to be?

"it's not a mac"


It's probably one of three things... this is the order they are most likely to fail, most to least:

bad Power supply
bad motherboard
bad video card

however, I would try swapping out a different video card first and see if you still have the same problems, because computers sometimes reboot/lock up if they lose their video card, or if the video card overheats/locks up.

Something is maybe overheating.