Whats wrong with my computer?

Question

My computer keeps turning off by it self and I have to unplug it for like 10 min. to get it to turn back on. It's older, It has Windows ME. When it starts back up it runds the scandisk thing and this window pops up saying that some Inportant file in the boot drive is damaged.... I Don't know what that mean or how to fix it. someone help!!!!!

Answer 1

Turning itself off may be a thermal protection circut. A circut that is set to shut off at a certain temperature to keep the computer from overheating and damaging itself.

Are all the fans(working) and inlets clear of dust and gunk ?

It wanting to run scandisk everytime at startup may be an indication of a  failing hard drive.

Lets see if we can repair the file that windows says is missing by repairing it. (this will leave all your data safe and only replace the windows files as needed)

Repairing the Master Boot Record

Damage to the Master Boot Record can occur because of virus activity, problems installing software, or errors during system installation. Some symptoms of a problem are:

When you boot your PC, you get a message stating that setup was not completed for a program.



Your computer hangs. It does not produce the DOS prompt or an opening screen.

If you are running DOS 5.0 or later, Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me, you can use the fdisk utility to try to repair the Master Boot Record. When you use fdisk with the mbr parameter, the Master Boot Record is rewritten to the hard disk without altering the partition table information on the disk. To run this utility, follow these steps:

Boot your PC with a bootable floppy that has the fdisk program on it. See the Knowledge Base document In Windows 95, 98, or Me, how do I make a startup (system recovery) disk?



At the DOS prompt, enter:   fdisk /mbr This activates the hard drive for a short time. A new DOS prompt will appear.



Remove the floppy and reboot.

This information was adapted from article 69013 in the Microsoft knowledge base.

You can search Microsoft's knowledge base at:

  http://support.microsoft.com/default.asp...

Answer 2

You will need to reinstall windows ME most likely. Just use the disc you got with your PC and everything should be okay.

Also, about your pc shutting off, it could be related to your windows being broken, but just to be sure, download any new bios patches they may have made for your computer.