[cstarflare]

this started out really irritating me but now it's got me worried

every once in a while, my computer will just power down. it usually happens in the middle of the night, but I've had it happen while I'm on in the afternoon, so it's not happening at a certain time.

at first, I had difficulty starting it back up - I'd hit power, it'd begin to whir, then it would shut down a second later. eventually I realized that taking my battery out stopped this startup cycle, and assumed that it was a battery issue. since I'm always at my desk I just left it plugged in and threw the battery aside. the whole random shutdown thing seems to happen much less often if I leave the battery out.

still, I'm beginning to worry about the long term consequences of this. so, I grabbed my system restore discs and decided to start over, hopefully fixing the problem along the way. unfortunately, when I start the recovery process I get a progress bar that says something like "loading windows files" that fills up within a minute or two, then the machine shuts down. when I enter the Setup menu right after booting, it seems to shut down after a minute or so every time.

naturally, I'm getting more worried as time goes on, and I'm hoping someone here has encountered this kind of thing before. any ideas on what's going on and how to fix it? pretty sure my machine's not under warranty anymore. I've got my stuff backed up on an external HDD just in case things crash and burn.