Mysterious Reboots

I had this problem last month. My PC was misbehaving and will mysteriously 'die' sometimes while using it midway (usually while web browsing - it doesn't matter which browser). All I would get is just a blank black screens and nothing moves. I did get the blue-screen-of-death but not often.

Once it halted while booting - it didn't go beyond the WinXP logo. And at another time, it suddenly rebooted while I was trying to login in.

At most times, it was so bad that the only recourse was a hard reset and doing a cold boot by turning the AC power switch off. Depressing the PC's reset button does nothing. And neither does turning off the PC via pressing down on the on/off power-on button switch for 5 seconds or more helps. Luckily though, my file system on all drives were intact.

What is happening? Is my PC coming to its end of use cycle? I am quite sure that my PC's RAM was alright. I did do a couple of 'memtest' and no fault was detected.

Troubleshooting

Tracing back, I kind of noticed that this problem started right after I did an Avast virus definition update. Only option then that I could think of was to do another update, hoping that this would solve the problem. And luckily for me it did - sort of.

My PC did die just like before, but just once.

I then did something unconventional: I decided to turn off my Avast AntiVirus Windows service after every reboot. Well so far so good, no mysterious reboots as of this writing.

Now surfing the web without an anti-virus, that is not a very prudent idea, is it? Maybe another virus defintion update is in order. Perhaps. Or perhaps next time since if it ain't broken, don't fix it. I just have to be more careful and alert on the sites I visit. Taking a minimalist approach while web surfing is not such a bad idea here.