Quote Originally Posted by craig View Post
Heh. I told Paddy in PM that it could be a hardware issue. (I had a similar issue with screen blanking on my computer and the cause was the fan on the video card causing a buildup of dust on the circuit board, which introduced spurious capacitance, which caused regular screen blackout once things warmed up, i.e., until reboot. A thorough vacuuming fixed that!)
Yeah, heat and electronics are not friends.

I keep cans of compressed air handy at all times and try to blow out all my computers once every two weeks or so. For the video cards that have fans, I pay close attention to those as well as CPU and chipset fans. The most common cause of unexplained reboots is overheating.

Vacuum's can be dangerous. Especially if it's metal on the end you're vacuuming with. Those bad boys have a tendancy to build up a static charge just from running too. I've used a vacuum but prefer compressed air (Costco sells it cheap if you're a member and near one). We have a little shop vac in my office which has plastic on the end which I've used at work. Just remember if you use a vacuum to never touch it to the motherboard or any other parts.

No matter what you do, always keep a part of you (like your forearm) in contact with the actual case frame to ground you out and thus avoid any ESD that can fry motherboards in an instant.