Gateway Comp turns off every 10 min.

[rc7237]

Need help on my Son's 2yr. Old Comp. It's a 2ghz P4 with 512 Rambus, Win xp home;pny verto gf 5700 ddr2, 40gb hd DVD and DVD+R drive, D-link air+ xtreme G. It boots up normally and gets in to Windows, but, turns off after 10 min. It looks like it's hibernated because it has an orange light by the power button, but nothing happens when you try to move any keys or the mouse. I have checked out power setting both in windows and bios but nothing seems to be altered. Please help. Thank You.

 

[BlackWolf]

Shuts off after 10 minutes of doing what? Is the unit idle, running apps, being pummeled by intensive games or what?

I know what I'm doing, I never lose. Can I borrow $5.

 

[rc7237]

Doing nothing. Last night, I went to the internet trying to find updates from gateway, but before I can access any downloads, it shut off by itself.

 

[Crashman]

It could be heat buildup due to dust if it's 2 years old and never cleaned, I suggest a can of compressed air.

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[BlackWolf]

Can you hear the cpu/case fans running after it shuts down? And can you reboot immediately after shutting down and get another 10 minutes out of it?

I know what I'm doing, I never lose. Can I borrow $5.

 

[BlackWolf]

Fine mister smarty pants, give a good answer before asking all the questions.

I know what I'm doing, I never lose. Can I borrow $5.

 

[rc7237]

No Fan working. Power button's useless. You have to unplug and plug it back again in order to boot up.

 

[rc7237]

I'll try that one. Thanks.

 

[tweebel]

Does anything happen if you hold the power button for about 7 secs?

 

[rc7237]

Nothing happenswith the button at all. I even tried longer than that, like 30 seconds.My first hunch was the power supply because of the upgrades in it, or maybe the CMOS battery. My son said it started to work out fine, but it was still doing that shut down time to time. Got my day-off today so I will follow what crashman adviced earlier and observe.

 

[apesoccer]

I think you can rule out the cmos bat. I have a dead cmos bat in one of my computers at home, i just haven't gotten around to replacing it. It only has problems when i unplug it...as it should, since the bat is dead. I've had to replace bat's in older gateways at a previous job, as they went out, and we only knew we had a problem when we lost electricity for extended periods of time.

You might try taking the side off of your case, and putting a big fan blowing in to it. That should tell you if you're having heating issues. Also, if you think it's an issue with your psu overheating(or overworked...), you can try putting your hand by where the air is venting out of it (before taking the side off), if it's hot, then it's overworking itself (as compared to the other fans venting anyway). Take the psu advice with a grain of salt tho...It's hard to tell sometimes if they're the problem component.

<edit> One more thing...If the orange light is on...there may be a light code associated with your gateway. What you can do is head out to Gateways site and look that code up per your computer model id.

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<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by apesoccer on 02/15/05 10:56 AM.</EM></FONT></P>