PC issue...need some help!

Hello fellow CAGers,

I am posting tonight with a rather strange issue my computer has gotten recently and hoping someone here might have advice as google searches have yielded nothing of help.

The issue began Monday night when I was on my laptop after work, just surfing facebook/CAG. I was responding to another CAG thread when my page suddenly refreshed. I thought nothing of it and started typing my post again, when the page refreshed once more. On my third attempt to reply to another user's post, my computer began acting up again, and this time I saw the number "10" type into my browser page at the top, even though I had been typing nowhere near those numbers when the issue occurred. Then, my computer shut off suddenly. No prompts, nothing, just shut off. I restarted the computer, went back on facebook/CAG, and not 15 minutes later I once again saw the "10" type into my browser page before my computer suddenly shut off.

At this point, I began thinking it was a browser issue. I use Chrome but have Firefox on my laptop as well, so I switched to that for the rest of the night and had no other issues. I uninstalled Chrome Tuesday when I got home from work. Then, Tuesday night, I was on facebook again talking to my girlfriend on the IM (which is stupid but she likes using it) when suddenly, my computer acted up again and I saw the "10" type into both the chat window and the browser page (this time I was using Firefox) and the computer shut off once again. I immediately did a scan upon rebooting it but my computer shut off twice more before the scan could finish. Last night after work I got the scan to go through and it showed nothing, but the issue occurred another few times and has occurred twice tonight. All these times have come while using Firefox, and I even tried IE and it happened with that as my browser too. Has anyone ever seen anything like this before and can offer any tips?

I have a Dell Inspiron that is less than a year old so I do have warranty on it, but would rather avoid sending it out if possible. I'm somewhat embarrassed as I consider myself relatively tech-savvy and can fix most general computer issues in my family, but I'm stumped here. Appreciate any advice the CAG community can provide!

Click on start -> Run.

Type "cmd" and press enter.

Type "Format C: /FS:NTFS "

Enjoy your new system! Might want to back everything up before you do this, it will wipe everything off your hdd.

Run Malwarebytes and see what comes up. This might sound odd, but does it do this if you're NOT connected to the net?

What scanner are you using?

You definitely want to be offline when you run virus scans. Meaning hitting that button on your laptop that shuts off the wireless adapter.

This could be a virus. Many viruses mask themselves and do not show up in scanners unless you run a virus scan at boot prior to the virus being able to load itself, so that's another possibility.

An offline bootscan is the first thing to do.

Also check you programs/running processes for anything odd. No one else have access to your laptop? No one would install a remote access program just to mess with you?

Another avenue to explore is I had a laptop that after doing a fresh install (which I do around yearly) it would need me to install mouse and keyboard drivers or it would act funny. Like my icon would move around on the screen without my knowledge and I wouldn't be able to type out a sentence correctly. So check for any recent driver changes to any of those.

If I were you, I'd check your keyboard.

[quote name='j-cart']Click on start -> Run.

Type "cmd" and press enter.

Type "Format C: /FS:NTFS "

Enjoy your new system! Might want to back everything up before you do this, it will wipe everything off your hdd.[/QUOTE]
Actually, I'm with j-cart...nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

thanks for the suggestions guys. Ran another scan that still turned up nothing, but I did some more research on sudden shut downs and I think it may be a issue with the battery overheating. Gonna take it to a tech expert buddy later today to see if he can find anything.