PC rebooted/crashed for no apparent reason.

[Saturos]

I left my mother to do her thing while working outside and when I returned, she said the PC "restarted" on her for no reason. She said it wasn't like a reboot where the Windows jingle plays and the OS and programs shut down, rather it flickered for a moment and turned off "like a light" before rebooting. A crash another words. She was browsing Yahoo when it happened and she said she wasn't touching anything but the mouse.

I can't imagine my PSU or CPU would be dying so soon. (The most likely symptoms of these these two things if they were dying.)

Both are of reputable quality: Enermax 600watt PSU and an AMD64 +3800. Both were brand new when I got them and I've only been using them for little over a year now. :/

I don't have any viruses or spyware either. I use AVG Free edition, a-squared Free, and Lavasoft's Ad-aware and ran them all in safe mode and neither procured any malware.

On a side note, could it be quite possible my PC's still infected with something? I heard recently these once reputable free-ware anti-malware programs aren't as great as they used to be?

Also, could it simply be some sort of memory leak? Just a one-time error of some sort?

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

Could have been a power surge or heat spike. If it happens increasingly frequently, assume your PSU is failing.

 

[Saturos]

Could have been a power surge or heat spike. If it happens increasingly frequently, assume your PSU is failing.

You mean a power surge from within the PSU right? I use a UPS for my system so external power disturbances don't phase my PC.

I do believe what you say though about my PSU possibly failing.

That's what I assumed at first too, but me mum wanted me to check in with others before blowing some of my college money on a new PSU.

If it happens again, I'll have no choice but to look into a new PSU. This time however, I want to be sure it's a modular PSU.

 

[blahblahblah]

If it has only happened once, I'd wait and see if it happens again. There could be hundreds of exotic and odd reasons for your computer to restart.

For instance, next time you have a memory error, ask yourself "Is it really a crappy version of windows causing the problem or is it because of a supernova?" I wish I could find the original article when I read about this, it is kind of fascinating. What I'm trying to say is that one reboot shouldn't be too alarmed. Start worrying after the second reboot.

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/03/do-we-need-cosmic-ray-alerts-for.html

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

Most common reasons in order of commenness:

failing PSU, bad memory, power surge, virus, overheating, cosmic/atmospheric disturbances (supernovae, gamma ray bursts, thunderstorms, etc.), ID10-t error.