Computer shut itself down?

[Eli]

There's a Cyrix P150+ (W95B, 32 megs ram) on my network here that had an explorer window open (internet sharing through Sygate) just a few minutes ago. Now I look at it, and all I see is "It's now safe to turn off your computer". Why'd it do that? I certainly didn't touch it, and there's no one else here... I just rebooted it a few minutes earlier, and it had been running all day playing Starcraft and Quake. Any ideas? Thanks.

[Dominus]

Check for trojan horses like BO, NetBus and Sub7.

They all have the ability to shut down your computer remotely over a TCP/IP connection.

[Eli]

Actually I didn't even think of a virus... I'll have to run a scan on it in the morning. I doubt it though, since all it did on the internet was go to Hotmail's login page once. Thanks for the quick suggestion.

[Jeff7]

Check this page; free firewall:
www.zonelabs.com (http://www.zonelabs.com)

Sorry if it's not a link; I've not had any good luck with making working links on this bulletin board.

[alpha]

Once, when I installed Win98 with my Permedia2, which eventually burnt out, it would start up, and when it should have go into windows, it would go to "It is now safe to turn of your computer".

[Eli]

I scanned it for viruses today and it's clean. Maybe it was just a fluke... It was strange though. Thanks guys.

[commodsquad]

Well the facts that it is a cyrix and it is well known that they operate at high temps already and also that the machine was gaming most of the day, I would suspect that heat was the issue (but dont quote me on that LOL) , maybe it (vidcard or cpu)wasnt cooled down enuff before reboot and it shut down on its own somehow... Just some guesses here LOL sorry if I'm not any help....

[Eli]

I suppose it could be a heat issue... I'll have to cut down that large Compaq heatsink I bought, attach a fan, and give it a go. I'm kinda sick of this Cyrix but there are other priorities before upgrading the processor. I uh, really doubt it's the video card... I'm kinda using the old (don't laugh) ISA card from the 386 that used to be in that case. I'm still trying to find a good use for that 50 meg hard drive... ;o) Thanks for the suggestions. I really appreciate it.

[Axel]

50 mb hard drive - ROFLOL - I've got floppies that hold more - deep sea fishing weight comes to mind.....

now - when you do the heat sink thing - don't forget a dab of thermal paste - make sure the IDE ribbons are as out of the way as possible - steal the fan from the 386 if it had one and put it in the back of the case to draw more air through the system - don't tuck the CPU between boxes under the desk - it needs to breathe.....

I've even got a fan blowing on the hard drive in one of my SCSI systems as the 7200RPM drive runs hot and adds to the case heat load which threatens the circuits and chips. Even heard of people adding heat sinks to those types of drives in other posts for just such a problem,