My computer is turning itself off after about 5 minutes. Why?

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Ok well, i dont know how much this is going to help.. but some of you that are using WindowsXP, try going to Control Panel => Power Options => And in the "Power Schemes" tab ... about half way down it says, "Turn Off Hard Disks:" make sure it doesnt say 5 minutes or 10 minutes.. it should be set to "Never" This way your hard drive will not shut down after 5 minutes. I dont know if this helps anybody, but i hope so, please let me know if this worked for you.

My computer is having the same exact problem, it turns itself off after a few minutes of being on. weird thing is I disconnected my ethernet cord from the back of my computer and restarted it normally, it did not shut off at all. I then plugged my cord back into the computer gave it 30 seconds and shut off, someone please email me or repost a post here if you know any idea's what this could be.
Thanks

my probleme is like that: when I play a game or a powerpoint file, my computer is blocking (dark screen whit a strange noise) and i have to power down by myself.
I have xp sp2, intel pentium 4 1.7, ge force nvidia 4 mmx 440 128 mb, and a hard drive of 80 gb free

God damnit! My damn computer wont let me play games. If I dont play games it will stay on all day, but if i turn a game on after about 2 minutes my computer just goes off and i cant turn it back on without unplugging it firts. i really need help PLEASE SOMEBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!

sounds like you're having overheating issues. check your motherboard bios for temperatures. typically cpus should run around the 60's and lower. your system temperature should be about the 50's. and your video card should be about the 60's or lower.

HI, I HAVE PIII 800Mhz PC WITH INTEL ORIGINAL MOTHERBOARD WITH 128MB OF SD RAM WITH NO GRAPHICS OR SOUND CARD.MY PROBLEM IS THAT MY PC JUST HANGS AT ANY TIME.I CAN'T USE ALT+CTRL+DEL OR ANYTHING ELSE, THE MOUSE CURSOR DOESN'T MOVE. I HAVE TO JUST RESTART MY PC NOTHING ELSE WORKS.I REINSTALLED MY WINDOWS XP, ALSO I HAV CHECKED MY RAM & HDD
WITH ANOTHER PCS.THEY ARE WORKING FINE. I REPLACED THE RAM BUT THE PROBLEM PERSISTS.AND ALSO THERE IS NO PARTICULAR TIME THAT MY PC HANGS, IT JUSTS HANGS AT ANY TIME EVEN ONLY IF WINAMP IS RUNNING. WHAT SHOULD BE THE PROBLEM?PLZ HELP ME.

Well, I'd check what the article mentions: the power supply, but also perhaps run a memory test: http://ask-leo.com/d-memtest . If those both turn up nothing, my next suspect would be your motherboard.

READ HERE FOR SHUTDOWN PROBLEMS! i had a q-tek 550 w power supply which i finally found out was giving me shutdown problems. my pc started turning off for no reason and i couldnt turn it back on till i upluged it from the wall, and even then if i tryed to turn it back on it would come on for less then a second and then go off again. u would have to uplug it, then plug back in again, then wait 10 minutes till pushing the power button, then pc would turn on?? but all seems well so far with buying a new power supply which is a q-tek 500w big fan version power supply, so i would say try changing your power supply if my infomation applys. good luck !! :))

Thank you Chakaone ! I'm going to listen to your instructions and buy a new power supply, any good website for me too buy them off

Cheers
btw i live in the Uk

my computer had similar problems:
350Watt power supply
AMD 2000 Athlon XP
Aopen Geforce MX 4000 v64
HDD, DVD-RW and CD-rom plugged in

Computer worked fine whilst playing DIVX movies,
but as soon as i started a 3D game (HMM4 for example) it simply turned off by itself after 10-15 minutes with no BSOD. After an immediate restart it played another 5-10 minutes...

I checked power and temperature:
5V actually gave out 4,8V
CPU temp were 67/68° C

So it seemed to be CPU cooling problem.
I manually under-cloacked the CPU to 1800+
(from 133MHz down to 120 Mhz)
and it seems to work fine after 30 minutes playing. So it might be a "fix" u can use before
replacing the cooler. U also need to make sure that your cooler is well placed over
the CPU die and there is enogh (BUT NOT TOO MUCH - on the die ONLY, not around ;)) thermal compound on it.

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