My husband has a Gateway Windows XP desktop. It is about 3 years old, no problems til last night. We immediately ran anti virus and malware checks and it came up clean. He goes to only a few usual places on the internet.

He turned of his compute to go to bed. We heard a noise like a fan running and that is a sound that this particular computer has always made when it kicks on. He thought it was my computer since he had turned his off.

The first time it sounded as if it turned on then off then on again.

He turned it off again, about 2-5 minutes later we got a repeat of the same thing, it turned on. This continued so we had to unplug the computer.

I am hoping that somehow a setting got messed up, or that this is a simple fix.

The fan that always runs for couple seconds when turned on did sound louder to me but perhaps that was since I was listening to it.

HELP!! ANY ideas, and a fix?