PC rebooting within minutes

Well, when I fired up Guild Wars earlier today my system rebooted after 3-5 minutes. I didn't think much of it at first, but after it happened another 3 times I started to suspect overheating. I cleaned all of the dust out of my PC and made sure all of the fans were running, all good. It still wasn't working so I updated my video drivers and reinstalled Guild Wars, still no good I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic tool to see if anything was faulty with that, everything checked out ok. And I wouldn't imagine it to be my hard drive or power supply, as I just bought new ones about a year ago.

Everything was working fine yesterday and in the past. So I'm not sure what the difference is between yesterday and today except for the small patch, but I was playing fine just after the patch and I wouldn't imagine that to cause my system to reboot. The only thing I haven't tried is reinstalling Windows, and I may if nothing else works. Before that though I just wanted to ask if anyone else has been having this problem recently, or if anyone has any other suggestion as to what may be the problem. Thank you

what temperature is your computer running at when this happens?

what type of PSU do you have (if its a crappy brand, you're lucky it lasted a year)?

http://www.vantecusa.com/p_ion2460.html
That is the power supply I am using.

How do I check the temperature?

Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced Tab.

Now, under Startup and Recovery, click Settings and uncheck Automatically Reboot.

Should you reproduce this issue a blue screen should appear instead of automatically rebooting. This will help in diagnosing the issue.

I unchecked the Automatically Reboot box but it still rebooted....and this time it happened within 10 seconds before I even logged in. Things seems to be getting worse

I am going to try a few different games to see if it is only Guild Wars causing this.

Edit: Well it rebooted with another game as well, but still no blue screen. What might this mean?

I downloaded the Asus Probe Utility and there doesn't seem to be any power problems according to it, but while recording it only shows reports in increments of 30 seconds. So I'm wondering if the power draw increase might be happening too quick for it to record it. Is there a more precise program that will allow me to check for this?

Also, I don't know what this means, if anything, but I can run GW fine in the background while tabbed out. It's only while maximized that my PC reboots pretty quickly.

You can lower your front-side-bus speed in your BIOS (basically slowing your PC down), and see if the issue still persists. If you're unsure how to do that, you might want to use a program like Speedfan instead to do it for you with software (you may damage your PC if you do this wrong).

Must have something to do with the graphics card, when it start using 3d mode it start consuming power. Either cooling is not ok, or the powersupply to the card is not ok. If u have an advanced graphics card u can see all temps and voltages (that was asus probe? or is that one for mainboard?) I use mbm 5 for checking voltages and temps, u can set the interval to low times there, and it creates a text log so u can check after. If voltages are variant when playing then your powersupply is just not enough. If the temp start rising, the cooling of the system is not ok. U used detonator destroyer or similar utilities to remove remnants of drivers? if not do so, especially when u switched brands (nividia to ati or vice versa). If the temp of the graphics card is acceptable, then u could try to increase voltages to stabilize. However it can easily be some other software dependent problem, then all these solutions dont offer anything.

This is a recurring problem in other applications that use 3D functions of the G card? Try running dx diag.

Well i had a similar problem, i think it was my graphics drivers, my PC would restart at random times in guildwars, i just re-formatted my PC and it was fine, but you could prob get away with just a driver re-install.

Im using ATI btw, their drivers are awful.

Thank you everyone for your input. I am indeed using an ATI video card. I will try a driver reinstall, and maybe try and independent driver like Omega. I'll also try that other program to check for power problems, that seems like the most likely cause since my PC is rebooting within 10-30 seconds of starting up GW now. It's never an error, game crash, lock up, or blue screen, the computer just stops working like it's not getting what it needs.

I may try your suggestion if nothing else works Shakkara, but I don't really trust myself with something like that

I am pretty busy today and tomorrow, but I'll post if I get the problem resolved for anyone else that may be experiencing it.

Bah. Not true. ATI used to have a rep for bad drivers, but that was years ago. I have exposure to both ATI and nVidia hardware on a regular basis, and believe me, nVidia's drivers are no better than ATI's. In fact, I've had a LOT more issues over the past year with nVidia's drivers than ATI's. This is a myth that's still maintained across the 'net by nVidia fanbois. Search around discussion forums and you'll find just as many or more compatibility issues with nVidia drivers. I'm not a huge fan of ATI's Catalyst Control Center app, though...it's a little too "user friendly" for me.

That said, what you're looking at could indeed be a driver issue. I would try downloading an updated driver, running DriverCleaner Pro, and installing the new ATI driver. If you're already having problems, moving to an unsupported driver like the Omega drivers is, IMHO, a bad idea. You could also quite possibly be looking at a problem with your PSU, motherboard, video card, or even the CPU (not likely). It doesn't sound like a heat issue to me, though.

Components can die within the first week of ownership. The fact that some things are fairly new doesn't make them any less suspect.

it sounds like a trojan or virus of some sort...i remember hearing about one of these on mcafee.com

Mmmm.....could be. I usually assume that people run some kind of real time virus scanner if/when they're downloading files. However, virii to occasionally get people...

is the video card on its own power rail? sounds like a power consumption problem to me. make sure the video card has its own connection to the psu and isnt sharing anything elses