Random reboots -- no blue screen

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davision

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 7, 2003
Messages
83
My computer is set up to not automatically restart upon failure. However lately, it is rebooting itself and there is no apparent cause.

I don't understand why it's failing since I have no error message whatsoever. Event Viewer just says...

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

The reboots have happened during DIVX encoding -- which doesn't seem to be overly taxing on the i7 920 that I'm using. Also, I've had two reboots in Photoshop. The i7 is overclocked to 3.65 -- I had it at 3.8 for a long time without problems.

How can I troubleshoot? Is it a power problem, or video card, or memory or what? I don't know how to isolate this. Presumably the lack of a blue screen rules out some components?
 
I'm no expert, but to me it sounds like power supply issues.
What PS are you running?
What other components are in your system?
 
I suppose the PSU could be an issue -- but I think I have a decent one and not a huge number of components. The weird thing is that it's so sporadic - I would think the failures would be very repeatable if it was the PSU. Anyway, I have:

Xigmatek NRP-MC851 (850W) PSU
3 WD hard drives
12 GB Corsair Dominator RAM
nvidia Quadro 4500
EVGA X58 Mobo
i7 920 at 3.65ghz
 
Have you tried resetting everything to stock settings/speeds?
Have you run memtest for at least 15 passes?
Have you run Prime95 smallFFTs test for at least several hours?
Have you run Prime95 Blend Test for at least several hours?
Have you run FurMark for at least several hours?
Have you tried manually configuring the RAM settings (timings/speed/voltage)?

There's a troubleshooting sticky, please read through it and report results.
 
davision said:
I suppose the PSU could be an issue -- but I think I have a decent one and not a huge number of components. The weird thing is that it's so sporadic - I would think the failures would be very repeatable if it was the PSU. Anyway, I have:

Xigmatek NRP-MC851 (850W) PSU
3 WD hard drives
12 GB Corsair Dominator RAM
nvidia Quadro 4500
EVGA X58 Mobo
i7 920 at 3.65ghz
Click to expand...


Actually quite the opposite sometimes. The reboots would be random on random things load/noload.... There are also several key things that could cause it to reboot other than ability to provide power...and/or your motherboard reset becasue of the lack of.... which is what most people think. 10,000 watts isn't crap if its regulated poorly and you have cheap safety features. Sometimes (if its the psu) i've seen what i thought wasn't lack of power but was internal safety features just cutting off.. I have no way of proveing this becasue I would have just a psu tester and a volt meter etc... but I knew it wasn't lack of power.

Over agressive overclocks are like "trying to keep a shaft of metal from shaveing during ware and tear. if you don't tigten the screw(3.8ghz)and you leave slack it will wear down. then if you tigten it a bit more 3.6 ghzbut not tight it will wear down some more.
where as if you would have tigened to 3.6 ghz and left it then it would be fine...."

I know that may not make since from the way i said it but it's true.

default everything... then run throught the sticky and post back. Also do you have another psu?
 
This may not be it at all, but its worth trying because it's so easy. When your computer is running grab opposite corners on the top and gently wiggle it just a little bit. Don't shake the thing, just wiggle it. See if it reboots.

I had a friends computer that was doing what yours is and it turns out he apparently had a short on the motherboard because shifting the computer would cause the problem. We pulled the mobo out, checked the stand-offs and blew out the dust. Although we didn't find any obvious problems we stuck the mobo back in and he never had another problem with it.
 
Thanks for all your input. Thus far, I tried pulling half the memory out -- so it's 6gb instead of 12. it seems to be more stable, but it's early yet.

If the memory pull proves to be helpful, does that definitely mean the memory was actually the problem -- or could it still be the power supply which might be flakey when powering 12GB of RAM.

One weird thing is that the reboots seem to happen primarily when in adobe premiere -- working in it or in Adobe Media Encoder. ot so much in other software. Even 3d rendering which is quite taxing, doesn't seem to be a problem.
 
You might want to replace that PSU with a more reliable one, what made you pick that one anyway?

It sounds like your PSU isn't handling your overclock very well, it's probably having dips in the power delivery
 
I picked it because it had decent reviews on Newegg, was modular, and Quiet. I didn't know about Hard Forums bad review.
 
Newegg reviews should be taken with a grain of salt, they are usually dumb and have no basis in actuality.

Consider it like this, up untill now your PSU has been fine, right, and so you have nothing to complain about right? So you write a review on Newegg praising your PSU during the time it was working fine. Fast forward to today, now you're having problems.

You didn't read any reviews on it by professionals. See the problem here? Newegg reviews aren't a good place for word of mouth.

In the interest of full disclosure, a few years ago I bought a bad PSU because it had the most reviews on Newegg, I learned my lesson from that. Now I read PSU reviews to find out what's good and what's not because the PSU is the most integral component you can put in your computer.

No PSU, no computer, bad PSU, your computer's gonna get fucked somehow, the only question is how. Good PSU? Game on
 
Sometimes the BSOD is set to not display and instead go straight to reboot... I can't remember quite where that setting is, but it may just not be displaying the more verbose error.
 
Yeah, that setting is under the System in Control Panel. I have long had it set to NOT reboot.
 
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