My Gateway LX Series desktop is about 6-8 months old. When I bought it, it had Windows Vista. I then put the RC version of Windows 7 on it. About 3 months after I bought it, it would randomly start to reboot, actually just shut off. I monitored the temperature levels and they seemed normal. So I installed a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate OEM 64bit. It actually got worse and would reboot more frequently.

I then contacted Gateway and they said my machine was built for Windows Vista (made me chuckle), and told me to update my BIOS. So I did, and it was fixed for a good couple months.

Recently, it started to do it again. Now I noticed early on it was doing it most often, if not every time when I was either watching a flash video or playing a flash game. So I decided to download the drivers again and I also downloaded my motherboard drivers. Seemed to be okay. A week later it started doing it again. And now it's doing it even more frequently. Sometimes I would turn it on, login into Windows and *BAM!* it would shut off.

Now I am at the point where I can hardly get it to turn on. It would freeze at the point where it says "Starting Windows", with the Windows logo. Sometimes it would say "Checking disk for consistency" or whatever and freeze there (not shut off, just freeze). I even got the prompt to launch startup repair. But that also freezes when it says starting Windows. It does not really freeze, just never loads up.

I am kind of lost as to what's going on. I have a few ideas but nothing I want to pursue (graphics card? hard drive?). Another thing I did try was to boot into a live disk of Ubuntu and try to launch every program I could and get on the internet but I never got it to reboot. So it sounds like to me it's a Windows thing, but I have no idea.

I am just stuck and would like to see if any one has any ideas or could lead me in the right direction.