Pc keeps on restarting ??? Help

[Patriot]

I bought a new system a week ago
P-4 Dual core, 2GB ram, 320GB HDD, running winxp sp2
It worked fine the first day, but then when i connected it to the net at night, i dunno what happened, now whenever i use use internet, for the first 2 min, it works fine and then BAM, restart
Without net, it works fine for at least 3 hrs and then restart
Sometime it keeps on restarting after i spend 5min on my desktop
It even restarts when i use NERO to save my data frm other partitions
And last, it hangs for 2 to 3 seconds b4 restart
One of my friend told me that it's a spyware, so i scanned with quick heal but it didnt show anything.
plz help, i'd really appreciate it

[pavasedge]

It could be overheating problem.Check your CPU temperature.

[hariharakumar]

try sending error reports to windows, if there are any hardware problems they will tell you, if you think its spyware try some popular spyware removal tools, and antivrus tools

[xyanna]

it's not spyware, sounds like a hardware problem see the cpu temperature with speedfan, maybe it is overheating.

[pimpom]

If it works fine for hours without connecting to the Internet, but always restarts soon after connecting, it's unlikely to be an overheating issue. Browsing is a very undemanding work for modern hardware and would not cause overheating.

If it's at all a hardware problem, it could be related to the RAM or a bad sector. Some new HDDs do have bad sectors, but they get replaced with spare sectors after a surface scan and become invisible afterwards. The restart could be triggered by trying to access a specific area of the RAM or HDD.

The OP could investigate by testing his RAMs with memtest86 and doing a surface scan of the HDD.

But it could well be a software problem - malware (virus, spyware.....), a buggy prog, faulty installation, etc.