Spontaneous shutdown

[rebootd]

I have a friend's Compaq Presario 1500 laptop that is about a year old, running XP Home.
About a month ago he says it started crashing spontaneously every now and then, meaning sudden shut off of all power (no blue screens or error msgs to give me a hint, no freezes either, just wham, OFF.)
If I run a scan such as McAfee antivirus, or Spybot, it always crashes like this within a minute. The owner of the laptop believes if he doesnt do anything at all, just leaves it on, that within a couple hours it crashes on its own (but I'm not sure if thats just because Hibernate was enabled and he didnt know the difference. It has not crashed on me while idle.)
What I have done so far:
Event viewer shows (I cleared before I started rebooting and scanning, to make sure I was seeing only relevant info):
Application log: no problems
Security log: Lots of Success Audits every few seconds, with a Failure Audit of Policy Change Event 615 every ten minutes or so - this is weird because I dont usually see so many records; remember I cleared these logs before I started.
System log: Error Service Control Manager Event 7023 every ten minutes or so, among a whole lot of Service Control Manager entries that are fine.I got the System Event 7023 to stop by reinstalling Winsock in the registry and telling IPSec to load automatically (it was set to Manual.) When I reboot, IPSec loaded properly, but then later I get the same Events/errors. Running an AV scan always crashes the machine again, and I always get the same Event 7023 in the logs. (I am not familiar with IKE -?)
I stopped some unnecessary services and stopped many loaded programs running in memory (to take a load off the processor) and still got the same crash response when running McAfee or Spybot. Reinstalled Spybot and updated it
manually, tried running again - same crash response.(Spybot had gotten rid of some spyware previously a long time before this started happening, however the user never updated it, so I know it has some spyware on it now.)
Found the hard drive badly fragmented so ran thorough Scandisk, then ran Defrag, which took two hours but finally
fully defragged it. Got rid of all temp files and cookies manually, cleaned up Startup via Msconfig so that only
McAfee is loading now, and now only necessary services are loading.
Disabled Hibernate and power shutoff settings so that everything should be Always On. Still get the same crash
response when I run Spybot or McAfee. Ran Scandisk again, still got the same response.
Tried running the Symanetec Security Scan from their website, that also crashed it. One thing I noticed: the system does NOT crash when I run Scandisk or Defrag, arguably just as processor/memory-intensive as running AV or Spybot. So I don't think this is related to bad memory? Bad hard disk controller perhaps? The only time I see it crash is when I run either an Antivirus scan, or a Spybot scan. When I run Windows Update, it has no problems... installs and reboots normally. All updates have been applied. McAfee scan engine as well as virus definitions have been updated. Of course my friend says that he hasnt done any changes, such as install new software, etc and has no idea what could be causing this sudden problem. It "just started doing it."
Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[micker377]

Heat? Clean all the air intake slots.

 

[rebootd]

It could be, although the slots are very clean (computer has been taken care of pretty well) and the box isn't hot to the touch at all, like some laptops.
As an update, I did run memtest3.0 (from

http://www.memtest86.com)

and it crashed again during that. That is run off a floppy, so I know this has nothing to do with Windows - it must then be memory/processor/heat/hardware related...any other tests anyone can think of?

 

[mikeeb]

Are you connected to the net when it crashes?
If you are then try running spy bot and antivirus whilst you are disconnected.

 

[Panurgy]

I have the same exact problem (same HW & SW) as rebootd. So if anyone has found a answer please let me know.

Thanks

 

[uglykidjoe]

Hi there. I share the same problem, and there's no available logging on that. Connected to internet or not, the PC simply shuts down. HW: duron 900 w/ 384MB sdr 133.
It may look like a thermal shutdown, sure, but at 42°C I find it not possible.
All this came after istalling Media Player 9, which cannot be "safely" uninstalled, as u might already know.
Please verify & let me know what MP you have on, I suspect there is an embedded feature on that crappy beta which runs stealth and crashes.

 

[11071965]

the powertransformer ist demaged. you have to change it.
(i hope, its the right word. I mean the module where the 220 v is changed to lowvoltage.

i had to PCs, where this was the solution.

 

[rebootd]

Hi....11071965,
When you say "the module" what do you mean, exactly? How is the power transformer damaged? Could you please clarify? (Thank you for the answer anyway.)

 

[bcastner]

11071965 does bring up a valuable point about notebook computers:

1. There may be issues with the charging circuitry, in particular the contacts between battery and notebook. This is often seen when the battery is removed regularly to hot swap additional drive devices;

2. The AC power adapter is a weak point:

. It often develops intermittant contact at the notebook connector to motherboard point, particularly if the power cord is stretched to its length limit, or regularly tripped over;
. The power adapter plug itself is a weak point, particularly if the power cord to plug is used regularly at an oblique or nearly right angle to the plug itself.

 

[11071965]

I had the problem with a "normal" desktop PC,
but it could be the same problem with a Laptop.

So you have to contact a HP/Compaq-Service-Center.
(What about garantee?)