Help?

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My computer has been acting up these few days; running slower, error messages, etc. Tonight, It suddenly shut off without any notice. I only got it to work a few minutes ago. Does anyone know what's going on?

If it was just running and suddenly turned off without any lock up, blue screen, or error message, it may have overheated. Most computers today are designed to turn off when the temperature at certain points on the CPU and motherboard exceed a safe limit, so they don't damage themselves.

First I would check all the cables though. If it's a tower or desktop as opposed to a laptop, I would open it up and make sure the cards and cables are seated well by pushing them in a bit, and if it's dusty inside I might use a vacuum and clean paint brush to clean it out (you must first unplug it and wait a few minutes for the capacitors to discharge before you do this and you must be careful not to damage anything). I would also make sure that nothing is obstructing the airflow around the computer.

Then I would turn it back on and install a temperature monitoring program if your computer is equipped with the sensors for it.

I would also check it for viruses.

It had only been running for about ten minutes when it turned off, so I don't think it over-heated. I had a virus recently, but Norton got that fixed. Is there a possibility that something was attacking my computer and it shut off to protect it?

No, it is not. A virus won't turn your computer off.

It could easily overheat in less than 10 mins. Could be your power supply acting up.

A virus may not turn your computer off, but a trojan will do so to install itself, or perhaps in your case reinstall itself. There will most likely be a startup entry for the trojan, so you will have to run an MSCONFIG and find the trojan amongst your startup items, and remove it. --Search your startup items via a database like this one to find out what startup items you have, and which ones should be turned off.

You will most likely have to isolate the troubled system from the network, as a lot of current trojans download stuff directly from the internet. You will need to use another system to go online and do a google search for removing the particular trojan that you have via REGEDIT on the affected system. --If you use REGEDIT, follow the instructions EXACTLY as they are described, if you deviate from this you can really f--- your computer up.

Could be a heat problem too. What is the temperature of your CPU, GPU, etc.? Also what is the CPU usage shown in task manager?

I don't think so.