Windows Live Messenger

Sounds to me like you've got a virus and a very serious one at that.

Run a virus checker first of all.

Its probably one of those ones that log you out then it sends a message to your friends to go to a certain website or tries to send you a zip file with a virus in it.

 

My mom's computer runs a new version of Live Messenger without any problems.

Most of the time a random reboot is actually a result of a BSOD. People with server farms got tired of having to go out and manually restart a server when there's an intermittent problem which is why autorestart is built in.

Anyways, to disable auto-restart on BSODs (to confirm that's what's causing the random reboots) assuming XP:

Open up system properties control panel by either:
-Right click my computer click properties
-Or hit winkey+pause
-Or go control panel->system

click advanced tab, start up and recovery "settings"

under system failure uncheck "Automatically restart"

hit OK, OK, restart if prompted.

Unlike Windows98 that would BSOD over everything (placing a floppy in the drive, removing a CD from the tray, a program crashing, etc) XP and other NT based Windows products only BSOD if it's something serious. Usually the result of bad or damaged hardware, crappy drivers, or bad configuration.

When you get a BSOD it will list at the top what module or driver caused the error, eg: "ntfs.sys"
towards the bottom of the screen it will list a "STOP" code. eg: "STOP 0x0000007B"
Write down these two pieces of information and try searching the net for results, they might tell you what component is causing problems.

Did you by any chance recently install any new hardware, maybe something like a webcam? I know in one configuration I saw the computer would occasionally randomly reboot (sans BSOD) when the webcam configuration was entered.

 

Uninstall your current anti-virus (if any) and install the 30 day trial of NOD32 then do a full scan with that. If it finds and cleans any viruses or other malware then see how things run after that. Note that NOD32 finds adware, spyware and other malware as well as viruses.

Once the trial period is over then decide whether to pay for NOD32 or go back to what you had before (bearing in mind that what you had before let stuff in). If you've been using AVG Free the first chart here may worry you (they are the results of independent tests).

 

There is an open-source product called aMSN which is similar to MSN Messenger and works on the same network (so you can talk to people on MSN with it). The great thing is that it has no adverts! I have been using it and it seems to work OK, though I haven't tried the webcam features yet. The interface is a bit odd, but no more odd than the Microsoft one.

There is also an open source messenger product called Pidgin which works on MSN, AIM, Yahoo, IRC and several other messaging networks. It has a clean tidy interface but does not support webcams. For me on Vista with SP1 it crashes occasionally when idle for a long time.

 

Are you running any Antivirus product?

Even AVG is better than nothing. Another good free one is Avast. As well a couple people offer free online scans such as Trend Micro and I think Symantec does as well.

I run aMSN. I like it better than Pidgin because I found the theme of Pidgin wasted a tremendous amount of screen space. Basically showing 5 contacts in the space that MSN or aMSN could show 20. I also find it more resilient to dropped connection (AKA Wifi) where MSN just tends to completely give up reconnecting. I tried the webcam feature but it only showed the first 640 x 480 of my 1.2MP camera which is extremely annoying. For that reason I switch to MSN if I'm video conferencing. Though I now have the utility "manycam" which resizes all the video to 640x480 so it will probably work.

I now run aMSN on my linux box because I leave that machine running 24x7 and just remotely connect to it anytime I check my messages. Overall I like aMSN but it still has a very much beta feel. In addition to my video quirk:

-There wasn't a uBuntu package so I had to cross my fingers and pray to the dependacy gods that the Debian package would run properly. It does, mostly. Clicking links in a message will not properly launch the web browser ("It just DOESN'T work" just like all of Linux). I'll have to get around to fixing that one of these days.

-When the linux client reconnects a dropped connect, windows that were previously titled a group, just show as a group ID number.

-On Windows it would occasionally, randomly switch to a french keyboard map (not in the rest of the system, only aMSN, and I don't have a French layout installed!

-I've had other weird font errors.

 

It's made by Microsoft and has "Windows" in it's name. What did you expect?

Seriously though, get that checked out. Boot Sector viruses are not to be trifled with.

 

Running Windows without an anti-virus program is ASKING FOR TROUBLE!

Your PC is probably infested with all sorts of crap, sending out spam emails, attacking internet servers and sending your passwords etc to hackers (who will empty your bank account, hijack your PayPal and eBay accounts etc). And because these things deliberately hide you won't know it's happening.

If you don't want to spend money, get AVG Free which is FREE!!

 

DO NOT GET AVG! it gave me a virus and i had to spend £100 fixing it

 

I also think AVG is poor, because there is a lot of stuff it doesn't detect. So malware, adware, spyware and other junk gets in undetected. It's better than nothing, but you can get MUCH better if you spend a bit of money.

AVG won't GIVE you a virus directly though (it's just not great at stopping them). However if you downloaded it from a 3rd party site from a search engine it may not have been AVG at all or it may have been a "modified" version. The correct and only place to get it is http://free.grisoft.com

 

whoops! i downloaded it from a 3rd party site :bang:
but now i've got norton antivirus. it's good, but you have to authorize every single thing you do if you want to access the internet. which is annoying. :tantrum:

 

Norton is good, but it's bloated and slows the PC significantly. It helps to have lots of RAM with it.

One of my clients has Norton on their PCs, and we're changing over to NOD32 along with a load of other changes. Norton is making the PCs run more slowly (they don't have enough RAM) but with NOD32 installed instead it found no viruses with a full scan. So Norton protected them well.

 

aMSN would only very occasionally switch into French mode.

Here's another aMSN quirk. under Linux, help-> about brings up the window "The requested file has not been translated into the current language yet"

I've seen Norton and Symantec products in general cause so many system slowdowns it's not even funny. They are terrible products and I'm pretty sure the cause of half the performance and stability problems that people blame on Windows.

Nod32 is the best antivirus money can buy, both in terms of minimal overhead and best detection rate.

If you don't want to use AVG free, Avast also makes a highly rated free product.

 

Does housecall work?

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

 

I think you've got a virus.
You need to do a virus check.
And it'd be wise to switch browsers to Mozilla Firefox.