Interesting problem

Hi guys,

I have an interesting and juicy problem for you all.... I have a computer (running Win XP Pro SP1) that kept restarting for no apparent reason (temp fine, no accidental bumping of the restart button etc), so I decide hey I'm gonna solve this, shouldn't be too hard.

Well.... it turns out this is the problem, the computer doesn't like having access to the internet. I have used various Ethernet cables, connected to different routers, used different network cards, connected direct to the broadband modem, and everytime without fail it restarts. Remove the internet from the equation and there is no problem.

So I think to myself I'll start it up in Safe Mode and see if the problem persists there, low and behold it doesn't. I can surf the internet just fine, so this leads me to the conclusion that something is going wrong with the GeForce FX 5200 video card when the computer is connected to the net (I'm starting to feel really hopeful here). WRONG!!!!

I change the video card over and there is no difference in normal mode, continues to reboot when the internet connection is available.

The only other potential cause I can think of is the PSU isn't strong enough or something it's 350W however there are very little peripherals drawing power from the computer in anyway.

So does anybody have any suggestions before I go and get a new PSU?

Sounds more like a software problem to me. I mean you've already tried all the hardware and by the sounds of it nothing's being taxed too much. I think maybe Win XP either needs to be updated (they're up to SP3 now and then some) or you need a complete reformat or something. Try that first and see what happens.

XPSP1 still has some nasty vulnerabilities and crashing when attempting to go online sounds like at some time you were infected with crapware that's either broken IE or your TCP/IP. It may or may not have been removed but problems often persist after removal as the crapware people hardly care about what happens to your machine after you remove their junk. Update to XPSP2 (or preferably SP3) would also be my suggestion as well.
You could look at something like this http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4521.html as a stopgap and it might fix your problem but make sure you back up anything you want to keep first just in case.

Not sure why you wouldn't have updated to XPSP2 a long time ago... Is there something about SP1 that's better that I'm unaware of?