PC reboots every night

Struggling to figure why...
I've read a lot of posts in this forum and others and nothing I've read has fixed it.

(First post here, btw - I'll try and cover all the bases)

Dell Dimension E510
XP-MCE SP3
Intel 2.8GHz
2GB RAM

1. There is no indication of a BSOD or system failure.
2. I've checked the App and Sys logs and there is nothing consistent showing up, and certainly nothing that says it would force a reboot.
3. AUTOPOWER is disabled in the BIOS - for giggles, I changed the time listed anyways, and that was no help
4. I'm running a malware check now - but no indication of foul play otherwise
5. I've been through the scheduled tasks. None suggest that they would reboot the machine, but I did disable some, delete some, and modified a few others. Tonight will tell if that experiment proves successful.
6. aaaaaaand, I'm running out of ideas here.

What am I missing? It's a serious annoyance to the wife, and if momma ain't happy - nobody's happy.

THX!

 

Go into system properties, (right click on my computer, left click on properties) and go to, i think it's under advanced, start up and recovery, and uncheck the automatically restart. You might catch your blue screen there the next time it happens

Two things i can throw out there is heat, and power supply (although if a ps, it should just shut down) and possible malware

 

ok, quick update
Malwarebytes found this gem after a quick scan
Trojan.SHarpro.PGen

I guess we'll see if that does it or not.

Still interested in further ideas

thx

 

fair question
Auto reboot is already turned off, so it should still be at the blue screen in the morning. And the few files in the minidump folder are very old. Also, no bubble from the task bar about a 'serious error'

Tower feels quite cool - and there is very little running typically. Excel, Chrome, Word... nothing taxing. At least nothing I know of....

is there some way to tell if it is overheating - other than a hot box?


thx, man

 

Yeah, there's lots of system monitoring utilities out there, a name escapes me right now. just google something or check your motherboard CD for a sys monitor. Right off the bat, I would head over to the malware section on this fine BBS and post according to the instructions listed there. You wont be waiting long, Broni is efficient and always on time

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

 

Have a look at your Internet Account to see if there has been an untoward useage of GBytes recently.
If so, I would Post in the Malware Forum and see if Broni can help. Neil.

 

Thanks for the tips, guys!

The wife informed me that it did not restart last night!

we'll continue watching it through the weekend, and I'll run a full Malware scan.

After that, I'll start turning on some of those tasks I disabled and hopefully see what caused it. In my haste, I kinda threw everything at it last night. I'll report back if the culprit was the malware or one of the autoupdater tasks.

Oh! I also pushed out the Windows update to a weekly, instead of nightly basis.

thx again

 

The wife has informed me that the PC only seems to be auto-rebooting once per week. I'll need to confirm the timing vs. when Windows Update is running, but that would be the main suspect right now.

thanks for your help, guys

 

We shut down both my PC and DW's iPad every night when were done for the day. I don't want to risk Internet outlaws getting into our stuff while we're asleep.

We fire up both my Windows machine and her iPad after we get up in the morning. I can't think of any good reason to leave your computer on overnight and expose it to hackers while you're not using it (other than supporting the SETI program).

Sure, the Windows device takes about 10 minutes to figure out what day it is, but that's a small price to pay to know that nobody got into it while I was asleep.

 

Frank

it all depends upon how you use your machine. We tend to leave things open - web browser, spreadsheets, whatever - and come back to them when we can. We don't want to spend 20minutes every time just booting the machine and locating the files again.

Also, this particular machine hosts all of our family photos and such. Somewhat of a home server. When we are upstairs on the laptop and need to access pictures and files, it is a royal pain to find out that the machine rebooted and is not accessible until someone goes down and finishes the process.

I know that people worry about hackers (a lot). I've never understood this. Hackers aren't interested in your family photos and email forwards. They are looking for credit card numbers, soc sec numbers, and the like. Oh! And to make it worth the effort, there needs to be a few million of said numbers in the database they are going after. No one is hacking into your machine at night.

 

Final Update: Machine rebooted right on schedule with Windows Update. Even got the fleeting "Your computer was recently updated blah blah blah...." when I logged in.

I've moved the setting from the recommended 'automatic download and install' to 'ask me when I want to install' new updates.

 

You don't say if you have a UPS. I've seen this behavior when the battery is getting flaky.

 

nope - no UPS. But thx for adding that.

 

With Malware Bytes finding something, I would suggest you post in the Malware section and do the full log and then let Broni suggest what you should do next. He is good at what he does in there.