text: why does my laptop keep shutting down while i'm working offline or online? a pop up box will appear saying i need to save my work and will be shutting down in seconds. this happens alot. any suggestions. gateway laptop. windows home xp software. i've had this problem with my laptop as well. i tried looking for every problem i could think of--viruses, malfunctioning updates, spyware, or overheating. i'd suggest looking for all of these culprits first. in my case, none of these problems were responsible for my computers flaky performance, so i decided to format my hard drive and install a fresh copy of xp--now my computer works like a charm:)