On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:39:54 GMT, "Joe"
wrote:


i suppose if the fan is not on, then the cpu could overheat quickly,
causing it to shutoff to save itself.

the lights on the back are the next thing to look at.


A computer will boot fine into windows with no fan on the processor, its
when you start doing things it overheats and shuts down.



That's mostly true, but it's more a matter of time.

From a cold/off state, it takes awhile for the heatsink to
warm up. The amount of time it takes is enough to "usually"
boot windows, but if it were just sitting idle, even with
ACPI power management cooling it, a few minutes later it'll
likely be too hot except for a few of the CPUs specifically
designed to be very low power or in a chassis meant to
passively cool the CPU.