Sister called and said her dell dimensions 2350 keeps shutting off while booting up. Started out of the blue yesterday. Any ideas what it may be?
Might be a virus or your hardware is overheating, try opening the case and place an electric fan near it.
Check and make sure the fan is moving see if you can check the temperature in the bios if it's overheating that would cause an automatic shutdown on most computers.
Could be a failing/failed power supply. So, as liquid4rchiv3 pointed out, the fan turning thing could be indicative of not enough air flow to keep the power supply cool - blow it out (with canned air is best) and see if that helps - if it's dusty (and sluggish) in the first place, that is.
its a virus... i too had the same problem.....(entered my system through my friend's pen drive) I cleaned it using nod32....
I think its the Problem wid ur ram(if its a hardware problem!). .. Just try removing and refit the RAM
If its under warranty... backup all the data on disk or to Internet and return to shop... get a new one.
Get the Asset Tag Number of the computer (is on a sticker on the tower) and call Dell Tech Support. They have very good tech out there who can diagnose the problem and can dispatch parts if need be.
Do you have any warranty with the laptop? Find if there is a recovery mode for the laptop. My VAIO has a recovery mode, which allows me to fix pretty much everything there is to fix. Even reinstall Vista (without a Vista DVD).
get knoppix on a pen drive or cd drive, boot into it. This will tell you if its hardware related, or a windows rooted problem. I'm leaning toward a windows problem, virus or somethin.
Check its Boot Order or IDE Control Setup! if it not works then try to get system boot using any Bootable CD