Alright i built a computer for my girlfriends father and it is having some problems that i have never come across before so i thought i stick it out here and see if one of you guys could help me out.

The computer will just randomly restart. He says it doesnt matter what he is doing; sometimes he'll be on the internet or playing a game and it will just shut down and start up again, no warning or anything.

Here are the specs for the computer:
SOYO k7VME
350W powersupply
AMD xp2600+
Ultra 256mb pc2700 memory
ibm deskstar 60gb
onboard video,sound, lan
Generic mod
Any ideas?

perhaps you could update bios

Perhaps it's a heat issue. Are there any diagnostic features on your motherboard or listed in the BIOS to report the CPU and case temperature?

wasn't there a virus a while back that did that... can't remember the name

deskstar 60gb. why?

if ur still having the problem with it ive often experienced vid cards bitching out on me, look to see if there is a log created when windows crashes, its most likely a hardware issue wethere its actual hardware of the drivers, so update the drivers and try swapping out some parts.... take out all the aux stuff so its just ram cpu mobo, since its onboard vid you cant really swap it out but u can disable it and the audio and lan and test a known working pci or agp card, id try putting the ram and cpu on aonother board and taking its parts and putting it on urs, so if the other one fails its ram or cpu or if that one fails it ths mobo, then u get to find out what part or just send it in

id be more then willing to help in any way, just im me on aim msn or yahoo im always on and almost always infront of this monitor since i cant do any thing else still.... but im supposed to be getting that wounderful neck brace off tommrow yay ill be free

What brand of PSU? Try some differenct memory. Install MBM5 to track the CPU and Case temperatures as well as PSU voltages.

Random reboots most likely are most commonly caused by crappy PSU or heat problems.

How do you find out if there is a log created, and if there is where would it be at? If it didnt create a log how can you set to do that when it reboots?

Run memtest86 to test ram, if ram checks out try swapping out the power supply.

that virus gave a 60 second windows message warning you that the computer would be restarted so "please save any changes" blah blah blah. and that virus was a biotch. especially since the alert would usually come out while i was away from the comptuer so i didn't know it was the virus. unless yer talking about a DIFFFerent fvirus that ... yeah.

It was very simple to get rid of though--update and run your virusscan utility, run Windows Update, run virusscan again, you're done.

I'm not sure that's correct, I'd say that driver issues are way more frequent.

you sound like you're having the same exact problems we were having with our 5 year old HP. it would randomly restart if we were doing something busy online (e.g. having more than one window open all loading a page at the same time). our solution was just to buy a new computer. sorry if my advice isnt helpful.

my stepmom has a Soyo K7-VEM PRO mobo. random restarts no matter what you were doing. updated bios. boom. problem gone.