When your PC spontaneously reboots itself...

...something is very, very wrong.

Ken Blan's note to me was succinct, but suggested a major problem:

• "Running Vista Ultimate on HP desktop w/ 8 g RAM and 750 g hard drive. Every so often the program reboots without direction. Please help."

With today's systems, there usually are only two common reasons for spontaneous reboots — and both are fixable! That's the lead topic in my column at WindowsSecrets.com this week.

I also discuss three other topics:

• Outlook files won't shrink (and how to fix it)
• Vista's different power options (e.g. what the heck is "hybrid sleep?")
• Two ways to write-protect USB flash drives

Access to all my columns, past and present is by a kind of honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the weekly paid-edition content (not just my columns) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here: http://windowssecrets.com/