Anyone good with laptops here? My Dell Inspiron has been randomly rebooting itself.

[JTG of the PRB]

It's happened twice in the last 24 hours. Once at my parents' house yesterday afternoon, once this morning in my apartment. The only common link between the two instances was that I was playing Minecraft at the time of the reboot (and both my worlds got completely erased, but that's another topic entirely). I was playing the game, the screen went black, and all of a sudden my computer was rebooting itself.

Any thoughts on why it might do this? My laptop does get a little warm sometimes, but it was no warmer than usual yesterday when it happened.

Could it be overheating? That was my first thought, but it doesn't entirely add up. I got my laptop in fall 2006, so I've had it for almost five years. The battery has never been changed, so I'm wondering it that could be the issue. On that note, however, I always have my laptop plugged into an outlet with the AC adapter.

So, what might be causing the issue? Overheating? Battery issues? Minecraft? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I'm completely computer illiterate. :crazy:

[pscot]

1. Have you done a system restore?

If itá recent software issue maybe you can sort of back out of it.

[JBoy]

2. Most spontaneous reboot problems with laptops are battery problems

One way to (almost) confirm this is to remove the battery, and plug the laptop into the AC outlet (so the battery is not involved).

If you don't get any reboots when the battery is not in the laptop, you can assume its the battery.

A battery from 2006 is getting pretty old, so I know where I'd bet money.

[JTG of the PRB]

3. Yeah, that's sort of what I was thinking. That's what various tech sites on the Internet said.

I took the battery out and am running entirely on AC power, so we'll see how it goes. I should probably order myself a new battery, since 4 1/2 years is quite a bit of time. Thanks for the insight! :hi: