I have this pc autorestart problem when playing games (any games), it just happens without any warning. Is so annoying and really down your mood playing games. I have NO overclock for my system, all at stock settings.
Here is what I did to find the culprit that cause the problem:
1. I thought my pc is overheated so I unmounted all the fans inside my casing, cpu fan, gpu fan and cleaned up the dust. Than I use Coretemp and Hwmonitor to check my cpu and gpu temperature. At full load, both temperature is at 70-80 degree celsius and this is unlikely to cause pc autorestart. After that I use stress test programs Prime95 (cpu) and Furmark (gpu) to run tests for hours, the tests passed, no crash and no reboot. So temperature is not the problem.
2. Than I thought is my power supply dying and not providing enough V rail voltage. I went to bios and under power management to checkout the voltage, it shows 12.6V, so is normal.
3. I proceed to check my rams using Memtest, run and no problem found. At this point of time, I have really no clue what is causing the problem...
4. Suddenly one day, an idea came to my mind maybe is the sound driver causing the problem, so I run games with sound DISABLE, surprisingly after hours of playing, PC NO AUTORESTART! Is very obvious now is the sound driver causing the problem. I am using onboard sound with Realtek Audio Driver. So I went to my Asus P5P43TD-PRO lga775 motherboard site and search for the sound driver.
I downloaded this Realtek Audio Driver from Asus website: Realtek Audio Driver V5.10.0.5859 for Windows XP 64bit---PassWHQL (scroll down and click on AUDIO). Installed it and reboot my pc, load up the games and play WITH SOUND, after hours of playing and NO AUTORESTART! It has been weeks, my pc did not autorestart at all, I am so happy that it is not my hardwares causing problem. I have this problem after I updated the Realtek audio driver to the latest. So downgraded the driver to V5.10.0.5859 2009.07.17 did solved my problem.
I hope this will help you solved your pc autorestart problem too, I know the feeling is super annoying when that happens while you are playing your favorite games. This solved my problem but it may not solve yours, so use it at your own risk.
Good luck.
Here is what I did to find the culprit that cause the problem:
1. I thought my pc is overheated so I unmounted all the fans inside my casing, cpu fan, gpu fan and cleaned up the dust. Than I use Coretemp and Hwmonitor to check my cpu and gpu temperature. At full load, both temperature is at 70-80 degree celsius and this is unlikely to cause pc autorestart. After that I use stress test programs Prime95 (cpu) and Furmark (gpu) to run tests for hours, the tests passed, no crash and no reboot. So temperature is not the problem.
2. Than I thought is my power supply dying and not providing enough V rail voltage. I went to bios and under power management to checkout the voltage, it shows 12.6V, so is normal.
3. I proceed to check my rams using Memtest, run and no problem found. At this point of time, I have really no clue what is causing the problem...
4. Suddenly one day, an idea came to my mind maybe is the sound driver causing the problem, so I run games with sound DISABLE, surprisingly after hours of playing, PC NO AUTORESTART! Is very obvious now is the sound driver causing the problem. I am using onboard sound with Realtek Audio Driver. So I went to my Asus P5P43TD-PRO lga775 motherboard site and search for the sound driver.
I downloaded this Realtek Audio Driver from Asus website: Realtek Audio Driver V5.10.0.5859 for Windows XP 64bit---PassWHQL (scroll down and click on AUDIO). Installed it and reboot my pc, load up the games and play WITH SOUND, after hours of playing and NO AUTORESTART! It has been weeks, my pc did not autorestart at all, I am so happy that it is not my hardwares causing problem. I have this problem after I updated the Realtek audio driver to the latest. So downgraded the driver to V5.10.0.5859 2009.07.17 did solved my problem.
I hope this will help you solved your pc autorestart problem too, I know the feeling is super annoying when that happens while you are playing your favorite games. This solved my problem but it may not solve yours, so use it at your own risk.
Good luck.