I've had my computer for a little over a year now. Just recently, it's started having some more problems. When it's been left on for a while, it just shuts off. not hibernating or anything, just shuts off. It i attempt to restart it immediately , it will just shut down again. If i leave it alone for a while, then it will start up again like normal and works just fine..... It seems to me like it might be overheating, and then shutting down as a precaution. What else might it be, and how can i fix it? Thanks.

Open it up and blow out the dust (using compressed air). Also, as is often the case, the thermal transfer paste between the CPU and heatsink is burned up / gone bad.

I take the heatsink off and re-apply decent (arctic silver, et al.) thermal paste AFTER blowing everything out (vents, inside, etc.).

DUST is probably the #1 killer of electronic equipment (that and proper air flow - so it's hard not to have both).

-myrkat

Hi...I have had a model 8880 going on 2 years now...mine behaved the same way about 8 months ago...it was the fan...and it was shutting itself down to protect the chip...so i sent in in for repairs...now...6-8 months later it is doing the same thing...only this time it shut itself off while i was doing a file transfer...when i got it rebooted i had lost my modem..(drivers) and my Device Manager was gone...tried to reload windows from the cd..while i was in safemode...and now it seems to be stuck trying to reboot to get out of safemode..why?..cause windows won't load in safemode..gawd what a nightmare