That is what it sounds like to me. What kind of PC is it?
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I told him that I believe the fan on his processors heat sink is going bad and not cooling the processor.
When a processor burns up it smells like burning plastic (I call it the burning dirty diaper smell :biggrin:).
If the fan is not cooling the processor then the machine will automatically shut down to prevent it from burning up.
I would mention that to whomever you take your computer to.
If they replace that and test the machine at a load and it doesn't shut down that shouldn't cost you more than $100 for parts and labor.
If the processor is shot it might cost a couple hundred dollars.
If they try to charge you more than that then you are getting ripped off or went to Best Buy (which is the same thing!).
On name brand computers they put really weak power supplies that can cause failures throughout the rest of your system.
I would recommend getting at least a 450 Watt power supply to replace the one you have, even if the one you have is still good.
That shouldn't cost you more than $120.
The fan can be running but not at the correct RPM's which would not cool the processor enough hence the shutting down after a while as it continues to heat up.
Also the more processes you have running on your computer will heat it up faster and make it shut down sooner.
Does it shut down quicker if you play a movie, or run complex computations dealing with prime numbers?
Also Chiefster is right about it might being cheaper to get a new computer.
If you can get your data backed up off the old one and don't have to pay for someone else to remove the hard drive to get the data off. If they have to do it they generally will only grab the items from "My Documents" (I assume you are running Windows XP as you bought the computer more than 2 years ago) so let them know if you have data stored in other directories.
[quote=hermhater;80588]
Does it shut down quicker if you play a movie, or run complex computations dealing with prime numbers?
quote]
I did shut down earlier when I tried to sync the triple helix worm thread into the dual core processor, but then when I factored the prime number compumegahyper link into the mainframe it evened out.
It is an HP Pavillion that I bought almost 2 years ago