Spontaneous Win 7 shutdown

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Colonel_Panic

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 5, 2009
Messages
328
Lately I've been experiencing very strange behaviour on my main Windows 7 workstation. I'm getting completely spontaneous shutdowns that don't show BSOD or even crash dump. Originally I thought iTunes was triggering something but recently I've had a few shutdowns without it running. I'm having a hard time troubleshooting because of the lack of feedback.

Memory tested fine with MemTest86+ and none of the other devices in the power bar turn off, so I'm fairly certain it's not a PSU thing. I just find it very strange that it doesn't restart but shuts down completely.
 
Well first I'd double check your WIndows Update settings.

Control Panel\System and Security\Windows Update\Change settings

and switch to "Check for updates but let me manually choose whether to download and install them" if you haven't already. I find anything else is either leaving you too vulnerable by manually forcing you to check or it'll just download, install, and restart without your intervention. Really pisses me off you have to do a registry hack to postpone a restart until you are ready especially when half the updates aren't doing major changes to cause it to be necessary.


Second I would check the Event Viewer and see if anything strange rears its head. I wouldn't be surprised if it was those damn Windows updates though.
 
Thanks Liger, I'll try that out. Note that when I said shutdown, I mean instant off, rather than a graceful shutdown like hitting the power button. Not sure if that was very clear in the original post, or even if that changes anything...
 
So now I'm thinking that it's just my AC power. The BIOS was set to [Power Off] when losing AC, so I suspect I've been getting a small enough break in power that it's triggered. I'm going to add a UPS and see if that helps things out.
 
Colonel_Panic said:
So now I'm thinking that it's just my AC power. The BIOS was set to [Power Off] when losing AC, so I suspect I've been getting a small enough break in power that it's triggered. I'm going to add a UPS and see if that helps things out.
Click to expand...


Indeed I was about to say the same. Either it would be a power supply issue. Either not enough power during a full load spike, dying power supply, or just an interruption in your power to the house itself. PC's seem to be really touchy about it unlike other devices in my house. Still to cheap to buy a UPS lol plus if it damages my machine all the more reason to upgrade :D
 
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