Look in the Windows Event Viewer to see if it logged any errors around the time of a crash. That might point you toward the problem.

You may want to power off, unplug, press/hold power button for ~15. Tthen open the case and carefully reseat RAM modules, PCI cards and cables in their slots. Sometimes these things get dislodged during shipping.

Then reboot and press F12 before Windows starts to load. Go to Utilities partition and run all the hardware tests including extended hard drive and RAM tests. Write down error messages, if any.

Random shutdowns can be caused by a faulty video card driver. So check at the manufacturer's site (eg. nvidia or ATI) and see if they have a more recent video driver that's compatible with your hardware and OS .

Ron

I have exactly the same issue and I know there has been at least one other person with this problem. The engineer has swapped the motherboard twice, replaced the hard drive once and tried it without the graphics card and selectivly removed memory. Dell support insist it is not either the front power button as it is impossible for that to defectivly shut down the PC. They also claim it can not be the power supply beacuse it has a green LED on it. As the engineer pointed out, if it shuts down intermittantly and then immediately restarts, the green light could not be observed to be off.

I have it plugged in to a Belkin power protector, but have aslo tried different sockets and different power extensions. It seemed OK although the BIOS would not update, but support resinstalled everything and after some prompting, they agree to let me press F9 factory reset, which fixed the problem.

I installed all my software and started using it again without issue. This morning I switched it on and between five and ten seconds after startup, it powered off, then started a reboot in to Windows did not shut down dos prompt etc.

I am at a loss of what to do. Dell are ringing back on Friday. I will test it round the clock until then. Should I just send it back. Anyone else agree with my engineer that thought it could be a faulty power supply. Can the power button really not malfunction? I mean he would have disconneted the cable and reconnected it, maybe it was just a loose wire.

This is the same problem documented in the DELL Inspiration 560 randomly reboots thread.

Same problem here - been having a few random reboots for last couple of months - did some hard drive tests with the Dell diagnostics and hard drive failed the confidence tests with lots of IRQ errors. Dell sent me a knew hard drive. Replaced and reinstalled Windows 7 etc. Worked ok for a week and then reboots returned. Dell sent engineer and replaced the motherboard.  No problems for another week and then another reboot.  They now want to replace motherboard again and heatsink. Told them I want a new machine because I need it for work and this could go on for ages replacing parts one at a time. They want to take it away for a couple of weeks to test. Waiting for response about new machine tomorrow from customer relations department. Don't have any confidence in machine - shame since previous 9 year old Dell was faultless.

I'm having the exact same problem.  I purchased my machine first week of March 2010 and the 1st random shutdown occurred 03/22/10.  Since then I can count on a random shutdown occurring at least once every 5 to 13 days.  I've checked my events log and there's nothing obvious that would be causing the problem.  I know one of the other folks said Dell is saying it's not a power supply problem but the symptoms have intermitent power supply written all over it.  Haven't called Dell warranty support yet about it but I guess I now need to just to ensure the problem is fixed while the machine is still under warranty but based on what I'm reading here the question I guess is CAN THEY REALLY FIX IT??  Really appreciate it if all of the folks with this problem keep posting everything they find out about it.

Thanks!   

Hi.

Yes I am also having problems with the Inspiron 560 Desktop. I recieved my order on 13 May 2010 by the night of the 14th, I had 3 unexpected power outages. The system powers down instantly but then restarts. I have monitored the temps (CPU 40-50d and Graphics Card 45 - 55d) and have ran Dell Diagnostics within the OS and outside the OS. The tests passed okay.

I never tried the system with its facroy default components so I do not know if it worked prior to my additions. I replaced the ATI Radeon 1GB card (low-end card) with my nVidia GTS 250 card. Because of this, I also added a 850W power unit to replace Dells 300 watt PSU. Oh and an additional SATA Hard Drive for my videos. Dells tests said they were ok and these components worked flawlessly in my previous system.

Any suggestions? I think I am going to re-connect cables and cards and trial system. If it does it again I shall add default components and trial. If it still does it then I shall contact support. Has anyone experienced this issue with the default Dell components?

Many thanks, Adam

sigh. So I bought my Inspiron 560 2.5gig 4gig ram win 7 Home Premium (delivery received 15-04-2010) and am also having delightful unexpected restarts. I do not get a BSOD and as far as I can tell it doesn't even do a memory dump. Just a hard restart.

I'm running diagnostics as we speak for a second time but don't really expect it to come up with anything.

I assume the next step is to phone dell and start the process that the rest of you are involved in. Will they let you keep the hard drive though? This is my work PC and really cannot afford any data "out in the world". Security agreements etc etc.

I am thinking that since most of these seem to be machines purchased close together that maybe we got a dud batch.

I'm now on day #10 of having NO random shut downs but I've gone as far as 13 days without the occurance so I'm sure whatever caused it will eventually rare it's ugly head again but I've got my fingers crossed.  I've not called Dell yet since these shut downs have been few and far between and I'd prefer they just not throw random parts at the problem until they know exactly what's causing it.  I've got another 10 months of warranty left so for right now I'm holding off on making the warranty call to Dell unless the issue starts occurring more frequently or until they can pinpoint the exact problem for the other folks who have already called to report the issue.  I've already made one warranty service call as a result of getting a defective DVD drive in this machine and I'm not in any hurry to go through that experience again.  They were more worried about selling me warranty upgrades versus fixing the problem I was having. 

As mentioned in my previous post the last random shut down I had occurred back on 05/10.  The only common thing I could see between that last shut down and all the others was that my IE browser was open to a web site or page that was heavily utilizing "Adobe Flash Player / 10 Active X".  Just out of curiosity I googled the phrase " Adobe Flash Player shut down my PC".  The search led me to numerous technical forums where people claimed that Flash Player was freezing up their browsers and in some cases shutting down / re-booting their PCs.  I know what you're thinking and just like you I was very skeptical that Adobe Flash would be the cause of this problem and responses to these claims in the various technical forums were what you'd expect to see with people indicating it's most likely a hardware issue and pointing to all of the most obvious culprits ie, memory, CPU, motherboard, video card, power supply etc.  I did see a few responses though that hinted Adobe Flash could be the problem along with a simple recommended fix for it. 

The recommended fix was to totally uninstall Adobe Flash using the Adobe Uninstall utility and instructions found here:

 http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html?promoid=DTEGO

After doing the complete uninstall then re-install the latest version of Adobe Flash again, DIRECTLY FROM THE ADOBE MAIN SITE.  Don't install it through any other 3rd party web site which is what I did when I first got my PC.  I did not think this was the cause of my problem but I also figured what could it hurt and it was easy to do so I went ahead with uninstalling / re-installing Flash Player on the day I had my last shut down.  Since then I've made absolutely no other changes to my machine (hardware or software) and as stated I'm at 10 days and counting with no random shut downs.  By no means am I saying this is the solution to the problem but I can say that in my personal case the PC hasn't shutdown since I took this action.  Probably a complete coincidence but it appears to be just as good an answer as Dell has right now :emotion-5:

wow i hope that works for you! Unfortunately,  I'm realtively certain that's not my problem as I was working in Autocad only (twice) and withs a particularly small drawings, another when i was viewing mail in firefox and once in exel.