Although that has been the case for me often, I've had 2-3 machines now that simply restarted and *sometimes* said that the "System had recovered from a serious error". He/she should really be testing for Malware as well. Might also have the computer plugged into a bad outlet. Should plug a clock in there, set it and see if it too has brownouts.

Originally Posted by thetroubleshoot

Just to throw in another suggestion... if it's not overheating, bad RAM can cause computers to shut down/crash unexpectedly. I'd probably run MemTest86 and see if there's any errors.

going to try memtest86 ver 4.0 bootable cd. the outlet seems to power everything else fine, printer, dvd drive, usb hub, 2 ext drives, monitor and radio are all on 2 power strips going into the same outlet. also need a link for hwmonitor though i have run hmonitor which is where i got the temps and dump info posted. if this will give more info i am willing to try. currently no error messages on startup besides windows repair suggested from time to time before vista starts. no blue screen of death, just black simultaneously with tower cutting off.

Are any of the other items plugged into the strip grounded? I've have an issue plugging in grounded electronics into my power strip ever since a thunderstorm "popped" it. This is actually the best case scenario and most cost effective, because all it would require is using a different bar. :P

Let me know what you discover on the RAM, it may not give that message upon startup because it depends on the system.

Originally Posted by thetroubleshoot

Are any of the other items plugged into the strip grounded? I've have an issue plugging in grounded electronics into my power strip ever since a thunderstorm "popped" it. This is actually the best case scenario and most cost effective, because all it would require is using a different bar. :P

Let me know what you discover on the RAM, it may not give that message upon startup because it depends on the system.

it passed the first test run and started a second test run. the tests appeared to be the same but when it should have finished the second go around it jumped from test#11, the last test, back to test#7 and the pass# dropped from pass# 2 to 0. idk what that means but it has been running for an hour an hasnt shut down yet. its still running tests but the fan has been running full blast since about 7 mins in. that has to mean that its not a heat issue right?
about the power strip, everything you plug into one is grounded if they still have the third prong, even if the plug for the device doesnt have one. i have switched strips just to be thorough and its still acting the same. nothing else powered by the outlet cuts off, just the cpu. the monitor goes to sleep shortly after shutdown.

Memtest86 runs in an indefinite loop, I apologize for not mentioning that. You can just hit ESC to get out. If it didn't detect and errors and no red strips came up, your RAM is clear.

1) Try a different outlet all together. Might be shoddy electric work on the outlet or it's blown, the computer might be sensitive to actually portray this more than any of the other items that are plugged in.

2) You mentioned you believe it to be a rootkit in your first post. Can you explain more about what occurred that lead you to believe this?

More or less I'm doubting the outlet, but stranger things have happened. It's better to find out it's an outlet rather than a critical piece of hardware. Wishful thinking...

it is a rather old house but i will try it. after exiting memtest i tried to start the cpu and it shut right back off before i could log into vista. the whole post is what makes me think its a rootkit. i have tested all the hardware and nothing leads me to believe that it is a hardware or power issue. my scheduled scans for kaspersky would start but not scan anything until i manually stopped and restarted the scans. the virus scans found viruses it wasnt able to delete and some it couldnt quarantine but when i left click it wouldnt allow me to send them for analysis and when i followed the path to try to find the items and delete them manually they were not there. at times full scans would not finish and the computer shutdown, after restart kaspersky showed a -1 error in the full scan. any scan that doesnt finish shows this error as it has happened on this computer but only when windows7 forced a restart after updates. after changing the settings for scans their techs told me to change the problem continued and grew into this retarded shutdown cycle. kaspersky rescue disk doesnt work, repairing windows doesnt work, repairing or booting windows from the vista dvd's doesnt work. that tells me two major things, whatever it was went after kaspersky first and after it affected that enough to make windows vunlerable it attacked vista. before the shut down cycle began i did have trouble updating itunes, and when i finally did it corrupted my ipod and my library was empty all of a sudden. i began trying to reestablish my library, we all know how spread out those files can be, but the shutdown cycle started killing vista before i could get it all back in place. all other programs seemed to work fine. i have tried downloading itunes to the laptop temporarily just to get my ipod up and running again but when i download it from the apple secure site i get an error message saying that itunessetup.exe is not a valid win32 application. trying to fix the desktop takes priority over that and unfortunately 2 months later it still havent been able to.

CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting. The fact that the fan is running at high speed doesn't necessarily mean there's no overheating problem. It's probably running at high speed because of a overheating problem and may not be able to compensate.