blue screen of death

i bought a new computer a few weeks ago and it occasionaly just restarts (mostly when playing GW or when running a lot of programs). I checked the control panel (i have xp home edition) and i unchecked 'restart automaticly' after a system error. Now i get a blue screen,saying i got an error and that i should contact my administrator.....
I asked a few friends and they told me to check the PSU, i checked it : Max ouput power : 250W

i have a Hp Pavilion t365.be
intel pentium 4 3ghz
1GB DD
nVidia Geforce FX5200 128mb

my friends told me that a 250W Psu is way too little, is this true? I know little about computers, so i'm not rly sure. Can anyone help me?

As your PC was bought ready assembled as a package then the psu should be fine, a blue screen generally is either a hardware issue or a driver issue, I would personally think its a driver issue.

If it happens again, write down some of the details on the screen, especially if there is a stop code at the bottom, it'll say something like..

stop 0x00000005c, etc etc.

what you can do also is update all your drivers from the graphics card driver the motherboard chipset driver, reinstall directx 9c.

What your friend said about the psu is kind of right, but most probably not in your case, your specs of the pc would not warrant a higher powered psu. As it is a pre built machine then its fine

One final thought is that bad memory sticks can also be the cause of this.

Best advice I can offer is contact HP support, they will try their best to help you...

Word of warning, don't try contacting HP support. They can barely speak english, let alone understand what your problem is. It took me about 4 hours on the phone with them trying to tell them to send me a new hard drive, never before have i been so ticked off. Also, for your problem, are you sure you have the highest version of DirectX? (it's 9.0, i think). Also, get all of the latest updates. Have you installed any new hardware into it? It also wouldn't hurt to get a higher power supply, maybe about 300...400 watt, as you will eventually have the need to upgrade your computer (such as with video card, better memory, etc.)

dont talk to us.

its new it has a warranty.

use that toll free number that came with it and call their tech support for repair/replacement

i would advise you to get them to upgrade the psu.

true, a fx5200 *can* run on a 250 psu, i know, cause my downstairs machine has one, but then again, i am not playing online games on that machine. nor does it have a P4, it has a sempron 2600, and only one dvd rom drive, so its power usage is lower than most modern machines, since i built Honey from scratch.

outside my own machines, i have never built a single machine with a modern vid card this year or even last year that has had a psu of less than 300, in fact all the machines had 400 psu in the cases.

other than that, check the room your in, see if its hot or stuffy, is the pc in a wooden case, say like boxed into your desk? can it get enough airflow to the back or sides?
is anyone in your family, or those that use the room heavy smokers?
(asking, because i saw a pc a month ago that had been totally gunked up inside from the tar from cigaretts. infact the cpu fan fins, those plastic blades that turn and cool the heatsink, they were starting to melt under the tar buildup. it was disgusting, and not very nice for the poor processor, i can tel you...ug! had to qipe my hands after looking at the poor thing.)

and yeah, if its just a month old, brand spanking new, and was never a disply model at all, get yer free support ect used up ^^

I would be very worried that your not getting enough power. I would upgrade your power supply, if it's possible. It may be an non-standard psu and you have to upgrade via HP...

Also it may be enough power but with brown out and drop in ac voltage it could be just enough to cause it to glitch. May want to consider getting an UPS where power is supplied from the battery to your pc (and if power goes out runs off battery)

*agrees with tempest on the ups if your likely to get powercuts*

best way to know if your psu is non-standard is to look at the size of the case. if its a mini case, smaller than the normal ATX cases, then chances are you will HAVE to get HP to change it.
i cant tell you how many times its faster to simply move the whole insides of a PC to a new case rather than try to get hold of one of those little squiddly psu's they use in those little machines....but lets just say a miniHP blowing its psu is one of the things that keeps my boss working and making cash ^^ along with new games comming out that need upgrades to play and the new pc market, hehe.

Some viruses can make your PC reboot occasionally.

It could also be an overheating issue on the CPU/GPU as the name brand systems generally have inferior cooling solutions and minimal case fans. Actually now that I think about it, my neighbor has an HP with a P4 prescott core and the CPU cooler was just patheric. Had him order a nice aftermarket cooler from newegg.com and when it arrived I slapped some AS5 on it and that stopped the lockup/blue screen problem.

First, I don't think this is a power supply issue. Unless you have some power hungry PCI cards, 250w should be plenty for your setup, even with a P4. Just for reference, I currently run a low form factor 3.0GHz P4 machine with 1GB of RAM and an AGP GeForce 6200 using a 200w power supply.

If you've updated to the latest drivers and you're still getting stop codes, it's definitely a hardware issue. In my experience with many stop-code-related issues, the culprit is generally the RAM. Run memtest (http://www.memtest86.com/#download0) for a day and see if it generates any errors. If it does, you have your problem.

And by all means, get HP to fix the problem; they have a warranty for a reason.