A Spokane area reader asked me the type of question I hear a lot. She writes: "Have you ever heard of a computer that just shuts down in the middle of what you are doing? I’ve been having this happen more frequently. I would shut everything down wait a few minutes and reboot and everything would be okay (well, minus the unsaved work). Now it is happening more frequently and if I just leave its dead carcass alone for less than five minutes, it turns back on by itself."
Unfortunately, this type of problem is almost impossible to troubleshoot without seeing the computer itself. But as I’ve noted in this space before, computers crash. They do it for any number of reasons, but lots of times you can narrow down the problem. So if you have a computer that’s not working right, ask a few questions:
- Did you install a piece of software before this started happening? Sometimes new software causes old software to die.
- Did you change a setting somewhere? In this case, given that the computer returns to life, it could be some kind of errant power saver problem. The power saving settings are accessed by clicking the Start menu, then Settings, Control Panel, then Power Management.
- Does it crash consistently when you perform a series of steps in a particular piece of software? The software could be corrupted or have a bug.
- Did you add or remove a piece of hardware? Existing hardware such as a loose connection or a hard disk going bad could also be the culprit. If you suspect a hardware problem, take the computer in to be repaired.
- Is your hard disk getting really full? Go into Windows Explorer and right-click your C drive and choose Properties and check the Free space on the disk. And overly full hard disk can cause all kinds of problems. You should always have at least 10% of the disk space available.
Often seemingly mysterious problems can be resolved with a little introspection. Another thing to consider is that over time Windows has a tendency to "go bad" for a number of reasons that you don’t have much control over. Sometimes it’s best to just back up your data, erase the hard disk, and start over by reinstalling Windows and all your software again. Note that this project is a huge undertaking and you might want to get someone to do that FOR you if you’ve never done that kind of thing before.