PC restarts and is not able to start properly again - help

[gc]

Hello,

My PC restarts after about an hour of playing games and today also restarted for the first time when i had a lot of programs open at the same time.

I've run the norton antivirus, an online antivirus, anti-spyware programs and have setup zonealarm (firewall), so there are no more viruses or spyware left on the PC, however the problem of restarting did not disappear.

If i browse the net, work on the PC, etc, it never restarts, 99% of the cases only after about an hour of playing a game.

I don't know too much about hardware, i looked at the fans, they seem to be running just fine.

This has been going on for only 2-3 days, i have played all sorts of games, even much much more powerful/demanding games before and everything was fine.

The computer is relatively new, Pentium 4, lots of ram, good graphic card, etc, i bought a gaming PC.

So far i am guessing only overheating from what i read here and there, but why now all of a sudden and is there somehow i can check if it IS overheating?


thanks a lot for the help

[Geekgirl]

You may have dust bunnies causing overheating. :b2:

Your video card may have a fan underneath it, take your case off and use some canned air to blow out all the fans, power supply fan, CPU fan, and video card fan, case fans. This, like you said could be an overheating problem.

[liljim]

is a good program to monitor your temps.It keeps them displayed in your taskbar,well worth downloading.I also agree with what geekgirl is saying.Blow everything out and see if it helps.

[gc]

well, i just vacumed everything carefully, lots of dirt inside the case. If this helps, great, if not, i'll be back in here. Thanks a lot for the replies.