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My notebook goes off randomly after some time without displaying any warning, error or blue screen.

I have re-installed my Vista couple of times, but while re-installing this problem occurs most of the time.

I tried Ubuntu on same machine but it didn't shut off. Any one knew the reason?

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    When was the last time you cleaned out the input and exhaust vents?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Commented Sep 2, 2011 at 17:56

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Try monitoring your system with RealTemp or SpeedFan and see if you're having a temperature problem.

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When I first saw the question title and first bit, I thought heat... but after reading what you wrote, I don't want to scare you, but, my first guess would be either hardware failure or just a driver issue.

It is worth a try making sure that all the vents are clear as @techie007 said just to rule out heat.... if your machine ever crashes in Ubuntu, then, this is the most likely reason.

Firstly drivers:

It is possible that you have a piece of hardware that is incompatible with the driver on the Windows installation media. If you are installing from a source that did not come with your machine, you may want to try another disk in case it was a restricted disk without (or with a invalid) storage controller, or similar that is causing a blue screen.

However, that being said, I have seen very similar issues a few times.

Most hardware have a few ways that they can be used. Firstly is "just working" and secondly is "full-feature rich". An example of this is a graphics card - with a generic driver (such as "Generic SVGA Driver") will work fine for displaying a picture, but, give it the full graphics driver and performance will go through the roof!

To expand further, on a laptop I had about 3-4 years ago with the dreaded Nvidia bug, it simply would blue screen and crash with the Nvidia driver, but, by uninstalling it and using the standard generic SVGA driver, it would work fine - and - just like you, I was able to use Linux just fine as the build I had did not have a good graphics driver.

Without seeing the laptop, it is hard to guess, but, based on my past experience and what you said, this is what I think the problem is.

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    Yeah that "I tried Ubuntu on same machine but it didn't shut off" threw me a bit. I'm not sure if they mean it "didn't shut off" as in it doesn't show the same problem in Ubuntu, or as in "It wouldn't shut the computer down on command, so I stopped using it" :)
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Commented Sep 2, 2011 at 18:22
  • I had a similar problem.. windows 7 used to shut itself down due to heat more than windows xp on the same machine. (I have dual boot). It seems there must be some sort of strict processor cooling policy in windows 7/vista than in XP or other OS like ubuntu.
    – Irfan
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 4:52
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This does sound like it could be a overheating problem.

Try having a good clean out of the insides and check that the fan/s are working. Does it shut off after the same duration of being on each time?

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