PC restart after shutdown

[associates]

Hi,

My PC desktop is behaving very oddly. It re-starts itself immediately as soon as it is shut down. As far as i can recall, i have not installed any other new softwares onto it. At the moment, the only way to ensure it does not get re-started is to unplug the power cable from it. I did search this on google and found some people believe it might be to do with the power supply failure or CMOS battery. However, a few minutes later after disconnecting the power cord from the PC, I decided to plug it back to the PC and waited to see if it starts itself or not. The answer is no. It stayed off. My question is whether this symptom is related to the power supply or something else.

Thank you in advance 

[JJ 3000]

When was the last time you blew the dust out with a can of compressed air?

[KingPincer]

For me i think it is a power supply failure. This happens once in one of our computer when the computer shutdowns it just restarts instead of shutting down. It just restarts nonstop, so what i did is clean the inside and change the power supply, no restart. Try this first hope it helps.

[mroilfield]

This may sound like a silly question but I am going to ask any way.

When you go to shutdown the comp are you sure that "Shutdown" is selected in the dropdown box and not restart?

[KingPincer]

Are you asking me or him?

[mroilfield]

Are you asking me or him?

Well I would say that I was asking the OP unless you are having the exact same problem and then I guess I could be asking you too.

[associates]

Thank you all for your replies.

Yes, I am certain that it's the shutdown option i selected when wanting to shut it down. I did this 3 or 4 times (do not think i could have missed the shutdown with that many attempts).

If it's the power supply, should it not have died right away? but why keeps re-starting it? Is it a kind of warning sign before it dies on you all of a sudden.

Never bought a power supply before? what to look for? I wanted to learn to buy without taking the whole unit with me to the shop.

Thank you in advance

[Karnac]

There's no set way for a PS to die. Sometimes it's sudden. Sometimes it take weeks of increasing random reboots. Sometimes it's an overload protection  that causes the shutdown. Since there are no servicable parts in the PS, replacement is the best option. The PS takes AC power and converts it to DC power which the motherboard requires. These are very low DC voltages and it doesn't take much to cause a power fluctuation and then the problems begin. Check out the wattage on the PS and get one the same or higher wattage.
Make sure what the connector to the motherboard is .... 20 pin or 24 pin for the enhanced ATX case. If you can, borrow a known good PS and try it .... if it stops the problem, yahooo, if not then keep troubleshooting.

Some more info here you should examine.

http://www.5starsupport.com/xp-faq/1-41.htm

If Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.0 or Direct CD 5.0 program is installed on your computer this will cause this problem as well.

[KingPincer]

What is this Roxeo Easy CD creator 5.0?

[Karnac]

CD burning software....one of the big names in burning.......in fact 70% of all shutdown issues are solved with a patch from them.

[KingPincer]

Ah well I've learned something new again. Well, right now I'm using Nero 7.