Spontaneous reboots

[cerb]

One of the guys here at work has had put put up with his computer doing spontaneous reboots every now and then for a few weeks now, and we haven't been able to sort out why it's doing it.

Now my girlfriend's pc at home is doing it, and it's doing it about 6 times a day for her.

Both machines are running Win2k.

Does anyone know what causes this? Can faulty ram do it? I have an idea the ram in my gf's pc is on it's way out and I'm going to replace it very soon anyway, so I'm hoping that's the problem.

Here are all the details I know about the machine here at work:
PIII-650
128Mb Ram (I assume it's pc-133)
Aopen mobo (can't remember exactly what model, I think AX63)
Aopen sound card
TNT2 m64

Full specs on my gf's pc:
Celeron 300A @450 (haven't tested it at 300, but it's been really cold lately, so I'd imagine heat isn't a problem)
2x64Mb pc-100 ram
Aopen AX6B mobo
Diamond Viper v550 8mb
SB Live!
Win2k Service Pack 2 installed.

[ayoub_ibrahim]

Go to System Properties and uncheck Reboot on error. This will at least give you a chance to see what the problem is without win2k automatically rebooting on you.

[cerb]

Oops. Forgot to mention that I did that yesterday morning on my girlfriend's pc, yet it still rebooted itself during the day.

Oh, I noticed in the event log that it did a dump before it rebooted itself - is there any way of getting useful info out of the dump file? I didn't look at it, but am assuming it's just a dump of physical memory or something (like a unix core file, which is useless without a debugger or something)

[2Whyzzi]

Interesting. I can think of two things:

1 - Brownouts/line spikes. Perhaps a UPS or quality power bar is in order.
2 - Run anti-virus scanner(s). Alot of new viruses have been released recently, perhaps you've been unlucky enough to catch one?

But, how knows? Maybe all you need to do is grab a can of compressed air and give the computers a good ... um, nevermind.

Whyzzi