| Computer restarts randomly, and webpages must be refreshed to display |
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Our computer will drop-out at random times, with a black screen followed by the computer restarting. This occurs regardless of which program is open, sometimes quite soon after booting. The problem has been persistent for quite a while, without any apparent pattern. The machine is less than 12 months old. A second problem has developed more recently – most web pages need to be refreshed a couple of times before displaying. The computer is running Windows 2000 with the latest ZoneAlarm firewall, Norton Antivirus, Ad-Aware 6. Random reboots are generally a sign that something isn’t quite right with the computer hardware. Furthermore, as the problem has persisted for a long period of time (and given the age of the computer) this heightens my suspicions that the hardware problem may have been present from the time you purchased the computer. Since your computer is less than 12 months old, it should still be under warranty. If my suspicions are correct and the problem is hardware related, then you shouldn’t attempt to fix anything yourself since this would likely invalidate your warranty. In any case, a hardware problem would be very difficult for you to diagnose and fix. So, my recommendation is you take the computer back to the place of purchase and kindly ask them to fix the problem. Regarding your second problem, this could be related to the proxy server setting in Internet Explorer being mis-configured. You can check the proxy server configuration through the Internet Explorer ‘Tools’ menu > ‘Internet Options’. Click the ‘Connections’ tab. In the ‘Dial-up and Virtual Private Network settings’ select your internet connection, and click the ‘Settings’ button. Check the proxy server settings against those given by your ISP. If your ISP does not require you to specifically specify a proxy server, ensure the use of a proxy server is disabled. Should you continue to have problems, try disabling (shutdown) ZoneAlarm. You may have (somehow) inadvertently denied a legitimate Windows service access to the internet, which is required for web access. Provided that the problem disappears after disabling ZoneAlarm, at least you will have a base from which to work when trying to track down the problem. |