PC shuts down without warning

[alexbutter]

hope you guys can help. PC shuts down without warning. its as if the power was disconnected but it wasnt

it doesnt do it always. but just now it did it over and over before even getting to the startup. occasionally it goes to the blue screen thing with a critical faliure, thats when it crashes while starting up i think.

ive tried scanning it and it doesnt get through it usually, when it does finish the scan there is nothing found.

i have no idea if its software or hardware, or what. just now it kept shutting down whereas last night i left it on overnight without trouble.

anyone have thoughts?

[LeeW]

Check to make sure your fans are running in the case. This is usually a hardware problem due to cpu overheating , bad fans, faulty memory........... Try taking the case off and seeing if it helps. Make sure all fans are running, try placing your memory in different slots. Try this application, it's called Everest, it can monitor your cpu, hdd...... see if maybe you are getting overheating issues

Lavalys - Comprehensive IT Security and Management

Also check your drivers for your hardware, chipset, usb, drives, video cards......., could have a faulty driver as well

[whs]

Without a specific message or a dump, this will be hard to diagnose. Have a look thru all the logs of your Event Viewer whether you can find something out of the ordinary - especially critical errors.
PS: you also have to specify what operating system you are running

[alexbutter]

sorry guys. not very comprehensive post, i know.

My Gateway DX4800-05e
Vista Home premium
Pentium(R) Dual Core CPU ES200 @2.50GHz
6.00 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9200

These crashes have been consistent since my previous post. (a restart got rid of some weird mhotkey thing that meant I couldnt use 'm' in my earlier post, but that's just one weird thing. although, an mhotkey.exe runs one or two sessions on startup.

So... I don't understand computers really, but there have been many related problems in the last couple hours. First I tried to buy something from iTunes (before all the trouble started) and it crashed mid download, after i restarted, the download was corrupt, another restart later and the downloads were gone.

Then firefox was acting funny, I couldn't (still can't) use the google search box - I can type in it, but when i try to hit enter, or click the spyglass logo, nothing happens. (if nothing is entered in the box then the 'go' function works.) I can just go to google homepage then search from there, but you know... so i thought i'd try and update firefox and hope that would fix something. all of my crashes have happened while running firefox or during startup, so I thought maybe an update of firefox would help. but when i tried to download the new firefox it said i couldnt save to that location, but I cant specify another.

then i realised that firefox wasnt saving the tabs, and was opening every time with an old set of tabs. so i thought that maybe i couldnt save anything.

so i tried to create a new text file on the desktop and got the following message:

An unexpected error is preventing the operation. Make a note of this error code, which might be useful if you get additional help to resolve this problem:

Error 0x80070571: The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable.

This also popped up earlier:

mswinext.exe - corrupt disk
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the Chkdsk utility on the volume C:

I seem to be able to get the computer to startup eventually by skipping the chkdsk a couple of times until it just stars up normally, but something is really wrong.

I wanted to run Hijack This to post the log took, but i get a runtime error 481. Invalid picture

so um, I cant download anything even, so had no luck with the Everest idea.

[LeeW]

A few things to check, Have you tried checking your disks for errors? Go to My Computer, select your drive Right-Click, select Properties, click tools, then click Check Now to check your disks for errors. Also try ScanNow. Go to Start Menu, select Run, type or paste sfc/scannow, if it prompts to restart to continue click ok to restart. Also do you have a Anti Virus/Anti Malware application installed and have you updated it recently, if not update it and scan.

The mhotkey.exe is for special keys on certain keyboards and unless you use use the special keys you can disable it. Try disabling it and see if your pc does better without it.

[MerleOne]

Try to install the freeware SpeedFan to check fans & T°. If T° seems high, then get a special fan for laptops, like those from Zalman (bought one for my Dell Laptop that had the same issue)