computer turned itself off, will no longer stay on for more than 5 minutes

[emersonwiebe]

Was playing a game, hit desk in anger (unsure if there is any correlation between hitting desk and pc failure, figured it was worth mentioning) and suddenly my pc seized up and started performing awfully for about 5 seconds (<1 fps in game, freezing) and then my pc turned itself off. now it will not stay on for more than 5 minutes, so i cannot check temperatures or download a program or run a virus scan or anything. checked cpu, heatsink was still liquid and fine but cpu itself was quite warm immediately after a crash (unplugged pc and felt it, i didnt run it without the fan) i have sufficient power going to the rig, all fans are spinning. issue is rather urgent as i have some very important documents on my pc that i need to retrieve (no other pc to swap hdd into) and i will need to continue using my pc for the next few weeks heavily. all help is appreciated. in regards to my specs, this pc was purchased from someone who didnt know the specs so naturally i dont know either. im sorry for the inconvenience. thank you for all help regardless!

 

[harrisjb78]

Try reseating the memory and HDD.

 

[boosted1g]

Boot into bios and monitor temperatures there, if it gets hot and turns off it is thermal:

You will likely need to get new thermal paste, remove heatsink/fan from cpu, clean off old paste with rubbing alcohal and then apply new paste.

If it is not thermal then go into system settings and turn off automatic restart on failure. This will force windows to show a blue screen on failure vs just shutting off. If the issue is ram, video card, hard drive it will blue screen; if the issue is power or mothebroard it will just turn off.
Tell me what OS you have and I can get a guide to the settings I am talking about.

 

[emersonwiebe]

UPDATE: CPU fan had been knocked slightly loose. It was hard to notice until I went to re-apply heatsink and noticed that the knobs thats secure the fan unit to the mobo were all loosened and there was no contact between the cpu and fan. Thanks for the answers!