Dell 3100 [overheating?] problem

I have seen most problems and have been able to find fixes. However, there are a few that sometimes are above my abilities to solve. I have one now with a dell 3100, I think it is an overheating problem in that the dell processor doesn't have a cooling fan, just a large heat sink. When it overheats it shuts down and attempts to reboot, over and over. I am working on that. I am leaning toward replacing the heat sink with a cooling fan and adding an extra case fan for ventilation. Anyone have any suggestions, let me know.

The owner thought it was the hard drive and had a pro look at it and he said the hard drive was bad. I put the hard drive back in the pc, booted to the utility partition and ran the dell tests. I was then able to get windows booted up after the pc ran a checkdisc. It worked fine until I ran windows cleanup and it started doing the same thing. Turning off and rebooting, over and over. Thats why I think it may be an overheating problem.

Any help would be appreciated.


Cliff

 

There should be a fan and fan shroud on the Dell Dimension 3100. Make sure the shroud and fan are clear of dust and that the fan is running. You may also want to clean off and reapply the old thermal paste on the heatsink/CPU..

 

I think I may have found the problem. The power supply tests over voltage and also intermittent voltage on 5v. I will replace the power supply and see it that helps.

I tried replacing the memory with a new stick and that wasn't it.