Windows 10 Randomly Shuts Down

[ARAMP1]

My Blue Iris machine is the only one that I'm having an issue with. It does it randomly. It could be once today and once tomorrow then be good for a couple weeks. I went ahead and did a fresh install of Windows but that didn't seem to fix it, so I'm wondering if it's a hardware issue. I've changed the sleep to "NEVER". Automatic Updates are disabled but up to date.

The event viewer doesn't really give me any useful info. I have a critical event that says "the system has rebooted without clearly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly." I also have an error event that says "The previous system shutdown was unexpected."

I'm going to swap out the power supply and see if that does anything.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[BORIStheBLADE]

I was thinking about trying another PSU as well. Could a CPU overheating cause this?

 

[TonyR]

I was thinking about trying another PSU as well. Could a CPU overheating cause this?

I was thinking about the CPU as well if the PSU didn't fix it.

I had a home construction client just this past week with a 6 year old Dell Optiplex minitower that he complained about being really slow. Knowing what the rest of the office housekeeping looked like and knowing there's a big German Shepherd there half the time, I pulled the latch on the left side and swung the panel down....OMG. The chassis fan, the front grille intake holes and the CPU heatsink fins were barely visible from the dust and dog hair. Very likely the PSU and its fan is clogged up too and the CPU is throttling down to lower its temperature.

I'll return this afternoon with my electric blower, take it outdoors and blow it out. He offered to use his air compressor and I explained why no air compressors (static electricity, moisture) or compressed air in a can (moisture) are to be used, just a power blower.

If that doesn't help it (I've already optimized Win 10, minimized startups, scanned for spyware, etc.) and I'm pretty sure it will, my next step will be to examine the CPU temps; I've had to re-do on a few similarly aged PC's the thermal paste or pad on some CPU-to-heatsink unions that have dried out after a few years and lost their efficiency in bonding the heatsink to the CPU thermally.

Maybe 8 to 10 years ago had a PC pull out a eyelet that was not fully soldered to the m/b, a spring clip that pulled down on a heatsink on the chipset and hooked to that eyelet fell off and the IC overheated, shutting down the PC.

 

[BORIStheBLADE]

I was thinking about the CPU as well if the PSU didn't fix it.

I had a home construction client just this past week with a 6 year old Dell Optiplex minitower that he complained about being really slow. Knowing what the rest of the office housekeeping looked like and knowing there's a big German Shepherd there half the time, I pulled the latch on the left side and swung the panel down....OMG. The chassis fan, the front grille intake holes and the CPU heatsink fins were barely visible from the dust and dog hair. Very likely the PSU and its fan is clogged up too and the CPU is throttling down to lower its temperature.

I'll return this afternoon with my electric blower, take it outdoors and blow it out. He offered to use his air compressor and I explained why no air compressors (static electricity, moisture) or compressed air in a can (moisture) are to be used, just a power blower.

If that doesn't help it (I've already optimized Win 10, minimized startups, scanned for spyware, etc.) and I'm pretty sure it will, my next step will be to examine the CPU temps; I've had to re-do on a few similarly aged PC's the thermal paste or pad on some CPU-to-heatsink unions that have dried out after a few years and lost their efficiency in bonding the heatsink to the CPU thermally.

Man that is pretty nasty haha.

 

[ARAMP1]

I've ruled out CPU temp. It's in a well ventilated network closet that's at 85 degrees F, though it's been several months since I've had it apart and cleaned it out. I might try that if this new power supply doesn't do the trick. Honestly, it probably wouldn't hurt doing it anyway.

 

[ARAMP1]

Knowing what the rest of the office housekeeping looked like and knowing there's a big German Shepherd there half the time, I pulled the latch on the left side and swung the panel down....OMG. The chassis fan, the front grille intake holes and the CPU heatsink fins were barely visible from the dust and dog hair. Very likely the PSU and its fan is clogged up too and the CPU is throttling down to lower its temperature.

Lucy the Smooch-Pooch thinks it would be a good idea to blow out the fans and chassis also.

 

[TonyR]

Man that is pretty nasty haha.

I got back about an hour ago, so here's just 1 image, the front panel after removing the grille. I won't bore you with the rest but you can imagine what the PSU, CPU/fan/heatsink and rear fan look like:

 

[Teken]

I got back about an hour ago, so here's just 1 image, the front panel after removing the grille. I won't bore you with the rest but you can imagine what the PSU, CPU/fan/heatsink and rear fan look like:

View attachment 125326

Just wow . . .

 

[Teken]

Lucy the Smooch-Pooch thinks it would be a good idea to blow out the fans and chassis also.

View attachment 125297

Beautiful dog . . .

 

[garycrist]

Mine would look like that too with Border Collie fuzz.

 

[ARAMP1]

Beautiful dog . . .

Thanks! She's the best! A little tread hyjack... She's a rescue. Got her when she was 3 months old and 20 lbs.



She's now two and a half and 95 lbs!



She's super smart. We've taught her to use a talk-board where she can ask for things and put together thoughts. When we got her, she immediately knew to go potty outside, so she went up to the front door and started scratching. Of course, I want her to tell me when she needs to go, but I don't want my door all scratched up, so I decided to get one of those recordable buttons that plays the recording when you press it to say "OUTSIDE". So, when she needed to go, she'd press the button. She took to it pretty quickly and we've added more. We've added "LUCY", "BOYS" for my twin boys, "MOMMY" and "DADDY" along with several actions. When the boys are getting home from school, she'll want to go outside and meet them, so she'll press the "BOYS" and "OUTSIDE" button over and over. Or, when she wants to go on a walk, we have a walk button but she'll also press "LUCY" "WALK" "DADDY". It's crazy. She wears out the "TREAT" button.

Here's a video of her asking for a treat. This is an older version of the talk board, she has a couple more buttons on it now. We foster for the local GSD rescue (that we rescued Lucy from) and the other dog in the vid is a foster dog we used to have. We're working on her fetching beers from the beer fridge. It's going okay, but she doesn't have the softest bite and has bitten through several cans. LOL.

View attachment Lucy Treat 1.mp4

 

[Teken]

That is just so freaking awesome . . .

 

[ARAMP1]

Try one of those CPU stress test programs... if that causes the machine to shut down then start replacing hardware.

I recall seeing things in the event log about high temperatures... if it happens. Search for something like "critical thermal event".

There's nothing in my event logs other than it shut down.

 

[IAmATeaf]

If it’s crashing then it points to a hardware problem, swapping out the PSU is a good start but I’d also try running the system with a single stick of RAM if you have multiple sticks. Personally I’ve never encountered a faulty stick that would allow the system to boot up but don’t forget that W10 will try and make use of as much RAM as it can grab and rather than starting at the lower address range and working up it allocates RAM effectively from the low and high end for system caching meeting in the middle. So a duff stick will cause issues.

 

[DG99]

Window 10 has built in memory checker. Search for "Windows Memory Diagnostic" in your start menu, and run the application and reboot.

 

[ARAMP1]

Window 10 has built in memory checker. Search for "Windows Memory Diagnostic" in your start menu, and run the application and reboot.

Interesting! Ran the check and it's all good!

 

[Flintstone61]

Could be so many things, but if it didn't shut off during the memory test, it rules out the power supply and the power button, and the motherboard and maybe even the processor.
Still a lot more questions than answers

 

[ARAMP1]

Could be so many things, but if it didn't shut off during the memory test, it rules out the power supply and the power button, and the motherboard and maybe even the processor.
Still a lot more questions than answers

Maybe the new power supply "fixed the glitch".

 

[samplenhold]

I had random shutdowns on my wife's gaming machine. Tried a lot of memtests and temp testing along with stress testing. It would never fail during those tests. I finally pulled the PSU and did a test and found it had an issue. Can't recall the test, something I found on the internet/youtube. I think one of the rails had a low voltage. Replaced it months ago and no problems since.

 

[CCTVCam]

I've ruled out CPU temp. It's in a well ventilated network closet that's at 85 degrees F, though it's been several months since I've had it apart and cleaned it out. I might try that if this new power supply doesn't do the trick. Honestly, it probably wouldn't hurt doing it anyway.

Have you tried actually monitoring the temps?

The room temp is irrelevent. If the CPU fan has become slighly unseated or the paste perished, then the CPU temp will go through the roof irreepective of room temp and the auto protection will switch the system off. The cure is to remove the CPU heatsink, clean the CPU lid and heatsink bottom, apply new paste and re-seat.

Interesting! Ran the check and it's all good!

View attachment 125402

You can't run a memory like that. It needs to be left for hours.

Ditch the Windows tester and download a copy of Memtest 86.

I think they recommend running it overnight. 1.5 passes won't necessarily show the errors and personally I wouldn't trust the Windows tester.

Also, if it's running for hours or days and then rebooting, try monitoring memory usage vs time. It could be you have a version of BI with a memory leak. Symptom will be increasing memory usage until the system runs out and crashes.