Laptop consistently restarts after running for a few minutes

[SamEli]

Hello there I need help with getting a laptop up and running. The laptop is my father’s. He is a mechanic and only uses the laptop to run his automotive repair programs. The laptop is a dell latitude D620 running windows 7 home premium 32bit with 4gb ram (2 x 2gb) and has a Intel T2400 processor. The issue is everytime you start up the laptop, after running for a few minutes it shuts off and restarts itself consistently everytime. So far my father has been using the computer in safe mode with networking because the laptop won’t shut off and restart by itself when in safe mode. He thinks the issue began when he upgraded his ram from original to 4gb. I’ve tried replacing the ram with the original ram but the problem still persists. So far I have ran sfc /scannow and it came back as “Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.“ a friend of my suggested it could be the hard drive and told me to run a software called crystal disk info. I managed to download the program on a flash drive on my personal computer and install it on my dads laptop and run the program before the laptop shuts down. It all came back as normal. I’m not sure what else to do. Any help or suggestions is much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[SamEli]

Update: I just finished updated BIOS to the latest available version (A08 to A10). I had no idea if it would’ve helped but I figured I might as well update it. Updating to latest available BIOS did not solve my problems.

 

[SIW2]

Possibly it is a heat issue. Less is running in safe mode. Or it could be a problem with the operating system.

You could try creating a new small partition - say 30gb. Then install win7 onto that ( skip entering the product key, this is just for testing). Boot into that new installation and see if it keeps going without shutting down.

 

[SamEli]

Possibly it is a heat issue. Less is running in safe mode. Or it could be a problem with the operating system.

You could try creating a new small partition - say 30gb. Then install win7 onto that ( skip entering the product key, this is just for testing). Boot into that new installation and see if it keeps going without shutting down.

So I tried install windows 7 on a new partition however in the installation setup page where it asks “Where do you want to install windows?” The option “new” for creating a new partition is greyed out and won’t let me click it. What else can I try? I’ve also took out the hard drive from an older laptop with windows XP and put it in the laptop with issues. Windows XP booted up fine and I was using it for a while opening as many programs as I could to try to get the laptop to shut itself off but it never happened. If I am able to run XP with no issues would that suggest I’m dealing with a Windows 7 software issue and not a hardware issue? Thanks in advance.

 

[SIW2]

If I am able to run XP with no issues would that suggest I’m dealing with a Windows 7 software issue

Yes, it does suggest that.

Do you you have a recent backup image?

If not, Reinstall is probably the answer.

Boot the installation media, and point it at the current windows partition and do not format the partition.

If you dont format the partition, setup will move all the windows namespace folders into a folder it creates called windows.old. ( assuming there is enough space on the current windows partition )

You can fish whatever you want out of there afterwards.

Custom Install Windows 7