Why does Windows XP shut down when the restart button is clicked?

The 'click the restart' button refers to clicking the 'start/turn off Computer' shown on the bottom-left of the screen in Windows operating systems (95, 98, NT, XP, Vista).

[Anyway, my PC is working fine now after I did a run of 'SPYBOT', an anti-spyware program. Be extremely careful about downloading free software because that's when my problem(s) started. "Spybot Search and Destroy" is quite credible, but it is more important to get it from the original website and not some other free program download websiste. Restart also means to shut down and start up again. so naturally, your computer would shut down and start up again If you press the physical power button on your CPU, computers do a "power off" of the hardware system. Normally you must hold that button for several seconds (3 to 5 is typical ) to shut down. Note that if your operating system (Windows) was still running at the time, you may lose some unsaved settings or documents. To restart, press the button again and it will restart. If you had not properly shut down the operating system (using the 'Start' button and selecting Shutdown) then there may be things the operating system must fix when it restarts. You will see some messages about the processes it is running to repair any damage. This is usually not a big problem as the system is designed to repair those things in such cases. Answer

SYMPTOMS

If you shut down your Windows XP-based computer, your computer may restart instead of shutting down. The computer may also restart unexpectedly while you are using the computer to perform certain tasks. An error message may appear on a blue screen when the computer restarts.

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CAUSE

This behavior may occur if Windows stops responding during a typical operation or during the shutdown process. By default, the computer is configured to automatically restart when Windows stops responding. To view this setting, follow these steps:

1. Click the Start button, right-click My Computer, click Properties, click the Advanced tab, and then click Settings under Startup and Recovery.

2. Under System Failure, view the Automatically restart check box. If the Automatically restart check box is selected, Windows automatically restarts if the computer stops unexpectedly.

RESOLUTION

If your computer constantly restarts while you are using it, or if you are trying to shut down the computer after it has stopped unexpectedly, click to clear the Automatically restart check box. If you clear this check box, you receive an error message when the computer stops responding. This error message may describe the cause of the problem. You can also review the system log in Event Viewer to view the critical stop error that occurs when the computer restarts. For additional information, you can got to Windows in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.