Computer Randomly restarts

[Easy Mac]

This isn't a virus as far as I know, because the checker hasn't caught anything.

It seems my computer has decided to occassionally restart itself. And earlier today, It went through its bootup, and hung on checking the memory, it just kept resetting itself on the numbers as it counted. Eventually I turned it off and opened up the case to move around the memory. Now, my computer (its 4 years old) is only recognizing the 64mb stick of RAM, and not the two 128 mb sticks. I've tried every slot, but it still only recognizes the 64 mb stick..

You guys know of any reason of why this is? Did my memory somehow fry at random? The memory is locked in the slots, and I wore an anti-static bracelet while I fiddled with it. I would buy a new computer as I've been planning for the past 5 months, but my money situation is constantly fluctuating. And there's no point in wasting money on new memory if the same thing might happen (one stick is around 2 months old).

Right now surfing the net is fine, but doing anything else or attempting to multi-task is unbearable. It took around a minute to open up a blank excel spreadsheet, so I can't suffer through this the whole school year.

[Eaglesfan27]

I had an old computer that fried memory because of incompatibility between the memory I added and the mother board. Any chance you are having this problem? My computer always restarted due to the memory, or at least it stop restarting once I changed the memory. Either way, good luck with the repair.

[sabotai]

"You guys know of any reason of why this is? Did my memory somehow fry at random?"

I don't know. Usually if it were going to fry the memory, it would have the first time you used it.

My opinion, and this is without seeing the computer so don't take it as fact :), is that it's one of three things.

1) The mohterboard is dying.
2) The harddrive is dying.
3) Windows is messed up.

Is the computer still randomly rebooting with just the 64MB of ram?

I would first put the other memory back in and reinstall windows. See if that clears it up. If not, it'll mean it's a hardware issue...which with a computer that's 4 years old would mean it's time for a new computer.

[mckerney]

Power surge/short would be my guess. Similar to what someone else here had but it coincided with the keyboard moving. If this is the case, first step in correction would be finding what component is causing this.

[Draft Dodger]

4) power / heat issues

[sabotai]

I always miss the obvious at first. :)

[Balldog]

I had this problem about a year ago, my motherboard was fried.