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Hi gerbils, didn't know where to post this so put it in General hardware...

I'm experiencing random reboots every now and then. Sometimes just doing nothing in Windows 8.1, other times while playing BF4.

I get the following error in Event Viewer:

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

- System

- Provider

[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
[ Guid] {331C3B3A-2005-44C2-AC5E-77220C37D6B4}

EventID 41

Version 3

Level 1

Task 63

Opcode 0

Keywords 0x8000000000000002

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2013-11-23T20:01:00.922726100Z

EventRecordID 16336

Correlation

- Execution

[ ProcessID] 4
[ ThreadID] 8

Channel System

Computer RG

- Security

[ UserID] S-1-5-18


- EventData

BugcheckCode 0
BugcheckParameter1 0x0
BugcheckParameter2 0x0
BugcheckParameter3 0x0
BugcheckParameter4 0x0
SleepInProgress 0
PowerButtonTimestamp 0
BootAppStatus 0

I've done a lot of googling about this and haven't been able to figure a concrete source of the issue. I thought maybe a Windows 8 file was corrupt and did a reinstall, seemed to work for a week but I have the problem again.

Specs:
Windows 8.1
i7 3820 SB-E Quad Core
ASROCK x79 Extreme4
Corsair TX850 V2 850W
8GB G.Skill Ripjaws 1600mhz in Quad Channel
EVGA GTX 670 FTW
Samsung 840 250gb SSD
WD Black 1TB
X-Fi Fatal1ty Titanium Pro

I used to think this was a PSU issue, but I don't think it is. Everything looks good when I monitor each component's power use in AIDA64 (new name for Everest).

Starting to rage here, hope somebody can put me on the right direction to resolving this issue... it's really starting to get to me.

HALP

Have you run Memtest yet?

Running Memtest is a good idea. Also try backing off any overclocking that you might have done as looking through the Microsoft article it definitely looks like the cause is going to be some sort of hardware error that crashes the system without any warning.

Ran memtest 8.5 hours, 0 errors.

I think I went back to stock clocks a while ago and it still happened so I went back to my OC'd settings.

In my scouring of the interwebs for answers, I did see some people having this caused by audio drivers, specifically the audio drivers for their GPUs. But disabling that didn't help either.

I hadn't had the crash in a couple of weeks and then had it 3 times yesterday, 2 mid-game in BF4.

I don't get a BSOD, the computer just reboots immediately.

It's not fun

Ugh.. I've been getting something similar.. the last time, my BIOS spit an error saying something the motherboard detected power spikes. Is that dirty input, or can the PSU be failing?

druidcent wrote:

Ugh.. I've been getting something similar.. the last time, my BIOS spit an error saying something the motherboard detected power spikes. Is that dirty input, or can the PSU be failing?

Even if there are spikes on the A/C line the PSU should be filtering them out. So if the motherboard really is detecting power spikes it's the PSU either way. Of course it is also possible that the BIOS (or the spike detection circuit that feeds the BIOS) is lying.

I suppose I could take my trusty PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 RED from my old rig and see if I get problems. But that's a lot of work that I would prefer not to have to do... but at least it would eliminate any possibility of this being a PSU issue.

Any other ideas, most esteemed gerbils?

Got the problem 3 times last night, just writing emails for work. I even rolled back to stock clocks....

Have you tried re-seating all of your cards and cables (including the mains power cord)?

Did anything (hardware or software) change right before the problem started?

Do you have an older video card that is known to work without issue? You could try testing by replacing the video card first.

If issue persists, start taking RAM sticks out, one by one and test for a day or two after each one to see if the problem appears again.

Have you tried to see if there are any bsod dumps? Maybe you disabled the BSODs from flashing before shutting down the system. I think i did that once and i didn't knew why the system didn't display any type of error.

Also check all drivers, maybe revert back to versions that you remember using in the past when the system was stable.

If OCed, revert to stock to stock during the troubleshooting period.

Stress test, use any program you are comfortable with and stress all the parts, one by one and lastly all at once.

I have another GTX 670 that I could grab from my other PC. The last change to the PC was probably back in the summer either when getting an SSD or taking out the 2nd GTX 670 from the system, not sure which one I did first.

I reverted to stock yesterday and still had the problem when I was just writing emails, no intensive load at all, just had Chrome and GMail open.

I could also swap out my 4 2GB sticks out for 2 8gb sticks for a quick test as to whether my RAM is the issue.

How do I enable BSOD dumps? I don't seem to have any.

I had a similar problem with a PC. Same symptoms and a very similar log error as the one you posted. The PC would shutdown during very light workloads, usually checking email or web browsing, sometimes it would blue screen but most of the time it would restart without warning.

I tried all of the most common things: Memtest, multiple stress test software, Power supply test, more OS reintalls than I can count, multiple driver versions for all of the hardware, BIOS update, temp checks, traded new RAM, pulled all components and reseated them, all new cables and the list goes on. Very elusive and hard to troubleshoot.

In the end the only component I had not traded out was the hard drive. I had tested it with multiple test software and it had no errors, but I had read somewhere that the firmware might have a problem so I tried updating it. It would give an error during the update attempt and unsuccessful at updating. That gave me a indication that there was a problem with the drive despite error free tests. So after two months of fighting with random shutdowns, I bought a new drive from a different manufacturer and installed it. The PC has been problem free for nearly two years. Not a hiccup.

It was the last component in the PC that I thought would cause that kind of behavior. So it's something to consider if you have an old mechanical drive around that you could try out for a week or two. This is of course after you have ruled out the more likely culprits.

I had a similar problem a couple years ago. It ended up being the motherboard for myself and took a BIOS update to fix it.

You say you aren't getting any dump files? Have you tried using nirsoft bluescreen viewer? It should auto-locate the files for you and tell you what was happening at the time of the crash.

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

[...]How do I enable BSOD dumps? I don't seem to have any.

I think i remembered it a bit wrong, it's not that i managed to disable the BSOD flashing, rather i disabled it from creating a dump file.

Here is what you can do to check on Windows 7:
- right click on Computer and click on Properties
- in the left side pane click on Advanced system settings
- on the new windows that opens go to the Advanced tab and look for Startup and Recovery and click on Settings

Once the new window opens you should have the option of choosing how to write debugging information, which ranges from none to complete memory dump (Kernel memory dump is the default setting) and you can also enable or disable automatic restart if a BSOD happens. Disabling restart on BSOD helps if you want to take a picture of the screen with error codes, but it easier to use a software like the one from nirsoft to open the bsod dump file. Note that here is should also be written where the file will be created and how it will be called.

In my case, when i had problems simillar to yours, it turned out to be the video card which is suffering from TDRs due probably to some manufacturing defect. I managed to stop the TDRs and BSODs by installing an older driver, but ultimately the video card is compromised. I don't suppose this is your situation, any component could cause problems, just wanted to make sure you rulled this out by swapping the video card for a while.

If you say that you installed an SSD and problems seemed to have occured after, then uninstall it and test it with a HDD that you know it works.

Try to start windows with automatic reboot in case of BSOD disabled.
If I remember correctly, you had to press F8 before Windows boot and select the appropriate list.

My suspicious is that Windows die with a BSOD and, after 5 seconds, it automatically reboot. With automatic reboot disabled, you should be able to see the BSOD and report back it.

Regards.

I didn't want to reply to the thread and jinx myself, but I think I'm no longer experiencing the problem.

I did a few things and can't say for sure what ended up resolving the issue:

- Driver sweeper to get rid of all nVidia drivers, and then reinstalling latest drivers.
- Reseating all of my RAM sticks.
- Disconnecting and reconnecting all power connections.
- Removing and re-inserting GPU.

I'm back at 4.4 GHz stable (even managed to boot at 4.62, but wasn't stable for long and didn't have time to tweak voltage to keep it stable) and have yet to experience an unexpected shutdown. I've left the computer on all day without reboots while idle, and have played a few hours of BF4. So far, so good... but almost reluctant to be confident that it won't happen again.

Thanks again for your help, all.