1. Put in a new CMOS battery.
2. Stop using SLEEP and try HIBERNATE instead. (The reason has been written about too many times?)
3. Be ready to reload that OS. Many folk wait till it's too late and lose their stuff.
Bob
Gateway LX6810-01 Quadcore about 18 months old Running Vista
This is an intermittent problem which began about 10 days ago. I have run Norton 360 and found some low-threat issues which were removed.
Overnight I usually set the PC to "sleep" mode - sometimes during the night, the system shuts down so I have to do a cold boot. (MIGHT this be due to updates which were automatically run overnight such as disk optimization?)
In the past few days, I've had the PC shut down while I was using it. No warning - nothing I can see that is related to some particular steps I was taking. (Not related to a particular program; although I'm usually running Firefox while the system is awake.)
When I have to do a cold reboot, at least half the time I have to respecify which hard drive to boot from -- rather than the bios remembering which one to use.
All my work files are stored on an external 1TB drive; programs on the internal 500 GB C: drive.
Appreciate any advice -- and will be happy to answer any questions that might help diagnose what's going on.
Could it be related to a 'hot' CPU? The bios reports temp of about 80 degrees C. Is that unusual?

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