Computer shuts off

I have a Dell Vostro 200 that I'm having troubles with. It will boot up and run but will suddenly shut off and reboot. I have been reading and most say it's the motherboard so I got a refurbished one from Ebay user parts-dell. I assume they are a Dell authorized company. Anyways I just put it in and it's still doing the same thing. I'm thinking it may be the power supply. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Ricky

Sounds like a power supply or a fan. They usually shut down if they get to hot. Make sure the heat sink on the cpu is properly seated too. Slightly off and it will shut down.

Check:
1,all fans (clean if caked on dust)
2, heat sink on CPU
3, change power supply

Good luck, let us know the outcome.

Sure its not a simple driver or windows problem? I had I had fan issues with an old dell but it never rebooted after shutdown, i had to wait then restart it manually.

Missed the part about the reboot. I answered that at 3:37 in the morning after i was rudly awaken by the on call phone.

I bought a dell for the kids for Christmas a couple years ago and it did the exact same thing. Ran fine for 10-15 minutes then shut down and rebooted. Would run for a few less minutes and shut down and reboot....eventually, it would just go into an infinite reboot loop.

After spending literally more than 20 hours on the phone (mostly on hold with the phone in my front shirt pocket while I continued on with my day).....they still couldn't trouble shoot it, but they did think, as did I, that it was the power supply. I NEVER found out what was wrong for sure because I couldn't deal with their customer service any longer or the piece of crap they sent me. I returned it to never look back at another PC. I'm glad I'm a Mac man.

D E L L

That is your problem. I have owned and worked on many Dells and have decided that I will never pay for another.
They use cheap proprietary parts that you can only get from them if that.

Except for my original computer I have always built my own. Until my son needed a computer. I didn't want to spend a lot for one for an 8 year old so I looked at Dell. Well my old computer was getting out dated so I ordered 2 of them. So far they have been good except for mine. I got them for Christmas in '08.
Well like I was saying I did a lot of internet searching and talked the some local computer guys and the most common thing with my model is the MB going out. The power supply and the processor being next in line. Well the refurbished MB didn't change anything so I'll change the PS. Picked one up on the way home. Going to install it after dinner.

And yes all fans are working and Heatsinks seem fine. I have not called Dell because it's out of warranty and I don't want to go through the hassle of talking to a heavily accented support personnel.

Thanks everyone

PartsMan said:

D E L L

That is your problem. I have owned and worked on many Dells and have decided that I will never pay for another.
They use cheap proprietary parts that you can only get from them if that.

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That's strange. I had the same experience with my Dell laptop. I had the USB ports stop working after owning it for about two months and spent the next year trying to get service for it. No one at Dell had a clue about what was wrong. All they could do was put me on hold for hours at the time and transfer my call to another "Technician". They would not honor their warranty. I finally gave up, bought a Gateway and never looked back.

Phone tech support in general sucks, I just spent an hour for three nights trying to diagnose why my internet connection was so slow. After all that at&t finally sent out a lineman. Turns out a squirrel chewed through the line.......... With dell I just use their online support, let them sign on to the computer and let them figure it out. This came in real handy last week when in 15 minutes they came to the conclusion I had a faulty dvd drive and had one sent out to me with in a few days

Well their online supports sucks too if your computer want stay running long enough for them to find the problem. But it's been running now for about 3 hours without once acting up. Just trying to get all the updates done but some are really slow downloading.

Thanks for the help guys.