I wonder what is actually happening down there.

I'm currently using my netbook AspireOne (Intel Atom). It works well except for one stupid glitch- Keeps rebooting without a visible reason all the time. I googled for all the ways to troubleshoot this but no good explanation is found.

After some time I discovered that it stops keeping itself from rebooting when I play Windows Media Player. I made further discoveries: I paused a currently playing mp3 file and the system now works fine without rebooting. Now all I have to do is just open WMP, play an mp3 file for a second, pause it and I can get on with my life. 100% accurate discovery.

What would be the explanation for this?

What OS are you using?

If it's Windows XP or later then you need to disable aut-restard on system failure.

This can be done by selecting system from control panel, clicking on the Advanced tab, selecting settings under the startup and recovery section and unticking the Automatically restart box, see attached.

Now rather than restarting, you'll see a blue screen of death which might tell you which program, library or driver is failing.

yeah, its XP. I'll look it up, thanks Uncle.