I recently purchased an Acer Aspire Desktop and it keeps on shutting off and restarting a couple of times around and than the screen goes black and the cooler turns on and the only way to get it to work again is to turn it off and than back on and than the same thing will happen again after 15 minutes or so of use. Does anyone now if ithis is a power supply problem or a hardware issue or something else?
Well, there's a few things to look at, one being the power supply. However, I'd check out the RAM and CPU first. If the CPU is running to hot, the motherboard is usually set to turn off. A program like Speedfan will be able to show you your temps, as well as suites like PC Wizard and SiSoft Sandra. If you start seeing temps much past 60*C, I'd wager you have a cooling problem. For the RAM, Memtest86 is your friend. Download it for floppy or the .ISO and burn it to CD, and then restart your computer with the disc in your CD/DVD drive. Let it run a minimum of 1 hour, but preferrably 3-8. If you have errors, you likely have a bad stick of RAM. If you have multiple sticks, pull one out and see if you get errors. If both those come back without issue, then I'd look at the power supply.
I tried a different power cord and the past two days it worked like a chard, and than the same thing happend again. I don't know about the RAM, but in fact I was planning on adding more RAM just yesterday and was unfortunate enough to learn there are only two slots so both are taken up by a Gig each. But in any case if there is a problem with one of them I can always put a different one in. But doesn't seems to make much sense that's the problem because it worked for a while with just a different power cable. So I wondering is there something about an old power outlet or maybe a lack of something of that sort that's causing an incoherent or insufficient power suply to the PC or something?
Personally I'd just send it back to Acer or wherever you bought it from for repair. My Acer Aspire broke after 2 - 3 weeks and it took 6 weeks to repair, but it was worth it because if I'd fiddled with it then they probably would have said the warranty was void!
