I don't know what's wrong with my computer...

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Okay, my computer is having the strangest problem ever....

Randomly when I leave it idle for 10 or 20 minutes, it'll restart on its own. Then it'll keep restarting over and over and over again unless I'm using it. Then it'll stop for a few days and start doing it again.

I don't have any commands to tell my comp to restart everyday. I checked.

Can anyone tell me what's wrong? I have an IMac G5, if that information is relevant in any way.

Busted power supply did this to a friends computer (specifically, it would turn itself on some random time after being turned off - usually immediately, occasionally hours). If its actually going through the reboot process... not sure.

What operating system?

My old iMac G3 was doing the same thing on Mac OS 9. I thought it was a power supply issue (old hardware, after all, and it had been sitting in a basement for a few years) but then I installed Debian and the problem went away.

If I remember right, the G5 CPU is a pretty hot running little beast. Is the G5 imac the desklamp looking model?

Could be there is an overheating issue there, especially coming into summer. Any random reboots or lockups when you have a few programs on the go at once? My first thought would be check memory and hard disk for errors. Any recently installed programs that you installed before this problem started? Finally, the thermal interface material on the cpu heatsink may have dried out, in which case the old stuff needs to be cleaned off and a fresh layer applied.

Hoping this helps.


john

If by desklamp you mean flatfaced, rubber necked Intel running Macs then yes.

I see everyone keeps saying overheating... Most computer will loop when they overheat... you said sometimes it will behave for days. The reason being, the computer cannot sufficiently cool in the few seconds as it reboots, and BIOS is one of the hottest times a computer can be on, and POST is an extension of that.

I'd be more concerned that something... squirrelly is going on. The power supply could be going out, that'd be the simple guess, but I've also seen bad capacitors on the motherboard do this. They'll do weird loopy reboots when they get hot, and 'hot' for a capacitor is different than a processor. I saw one that a blown cap was keeping a lady from playing CD's, even though the drive would show and the disk would pop up. It just wouldn't run. So you could also try checking those.

If it is a heat issue, pointing a fan at it should solve the symptom. Then you have to find out why it's suddenly doing it, but fans are simple, everyone has one.

G5 is a PowerPC processor, not Intel.

Anyways, this is what the G5 looks like:

I knew that. Teach me to post when tired. G5's and Intel's both run in that same case though. *headdesk* I seem so dense when my fingers get ahead of my brain...

Your computer is probably overheating. Too bad replacing anything but the RAM, hard drive and CD drive is expensive with iMacs. That's the reason why I am not a big fan of all-in-one computers. Send the computer in for repair.

Mac OS 10.3.9.

And for the people who've said that it might be overheating: I don't think that's it. My house has central air, so it's always around 70 degrees in here.

A bit old, but a good choice for that machine. If it's not overheating, check the power supply. Could be faulty. Or else the OS is acting up for unexplained reasons.

It doesn't matter what the house temperature is, what matters is the internal temperature. If you've had a fan inside the case stop working, or some similar problem, it will overheat, and if it keeps overheating, you will lose all your data because it will ruin your hard drives.

I would definitely get it checked, you don't want to deal with losing all your data.

Have you checked inside to see if there is a dust build up on the CPU, GPU fans + heat sinks or the power supply fan. Also dust on the rear of the MB could cause issues

Is there any program on the mac that can show the computer temperature and voltage? There's plenty on PC. In fact it's even available in the BIOS. Check these readings and you should know if your computer is overheating or if your psu is going bad.