Whenever a program, which has been running for a fair amount of time is closed the computer restarts! This occurs with most applications, such as Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Microsoft Word, etc’¦ The problem only started after upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. The computer is an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with 256 MB RAM and a 40 GB hard drive.

This is quite a difficult question. People are known to experience random restarts in Windows and these problems are usually attributed to hardware related problems, such as faulty RAM or video-driver conflicts. However, your problems are not so random so there should be a bit more logic as to why this problem is occurring. As the problem only occurred after upgrading to Windows 2000, faulty hardware is probably not the cause of the problem. A likely possibility is that there is some sort of driver conflict or incompatibility. Some drivers and hardware devices which work under Windows 98 are not compatible with Windows 2000 (as Windows 2000 is based on the Windows NT system architecture). I encountered compatibility problems with a video tuner card when upgrading a machine from Windows 98 to Windows 2000.

If you received any warnings about incompatible hardware during the Windows 2000 upgrade procedure, now may be the time to uninstall the drivers for the aforementioned device. Even if you didn’t receive any warnings, it is possible there are incompatible hardware drivers installed. As a first step to narrowing down the problem, download and install the latest video drivers and audio drivers for your computer. Although this is an all too commonly suggested solution, it does occasionally work! Assuming the problem persists, you could try systematically uninstalling drivers (through the ‘System’ control panel > ‘Hardware’ tab > ‘Device Manager’) in a trial-and-error approach to solving the problem. Just make sure you have the drivers handy so they can be reinstalled. Also, just do the uninstallation for those ‘common’ devices for which you understand the function behind the name, like modems, tv tuner cards, etc’¦ Also, don’t go uninstalling devices like system device drivers (e.g., System CMOS, PCI Bus) as you could end up with some serious problems. If the problem continues after uninstalling and reinstalling drivers for the common devices, proceed to the next procedure.

The next procedure: reinstall Windows. Not the most elegant solution, but it gets the job done! Occasionally it is a good idea to backup important data which you want to keep, format the hard drive and reinstall Windows. This is probably a situation where it would be a good idea, as after having Windows installed for a while it tends to accumulate a lot of junk and problems start to surface. Just make sure that you backup all data before attempting this procedure, as you will lose all data!