Sudden computer shutdowns

NeonSpyderNeonSpyder "Das est NTLDR?" Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Tell me something I want to hear</div>Hey.

This is like the fourth time I've gotten help from you wizards to help fix my computer. Everytime my problem has been vast and perplexing, frequently defying any sanity or reason. Today might be the exception!

My computer is awesome, I love it. It's worked faithfully for me for years now, churning away happily.

Today it hates me. I had a fleet operation scheduled in EVE that I was supposed to be commanding and TODAY is the day my computer decides to crash on me.

the symptom:

Computer gives a hard shutdown with no warning while running the EVE client (potentially any other game, I haven't checked yet). It seems to be working fine and then all black with no thermal warning screech from the case, no BSOD, nothing.

Analysis:

So I suspect a thermal issue and after blowing a few dust bunnies out of the case attempt to run the client again. Runs for a few minutes, long enough for me to get the fleet going before it crashes again. I try a third time after getting some more dust out of the PSU and running SpeedFan to monitor temperatures but the damn computer crashes the second I log into the game!

I have been running windows 7 without any games for the past 15 minutes and it hasn't crashed. Interesting? but what does it mean!

Speedfan tells me my CPUs are running idle at 30-35c, extremely cool as I understand. I haven't yet checked what they are under load, but it can't be that much more.

GPU temperatures are a comfy 52c but have never been historically low. When I boot up and before the fan kicks in the temp can be as high as 70c without any load so I've been watching this but I don't suspect the GPU is overheating. Occasionally I get a glitched out driver that causes... confusing effects on the computer but that's another (unsolvable) problem. Bottom line: I don't think this has anything to do with the GPU.

Conclusion:

Power supply might be dying? If I get a sudden draw from the GPU when a game begins to run, could that be responsible? It might explain things.

What else could it be? Tell me it's just the PSU and I'll go buy a new one. That would be a best case scenario as far as I'm concerned.

Help me Natural Selection Off Topic, you're my only hope.
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Comments

  • NeonSpyderNeonSpyder &quot;Das est NTLDR?&quot; Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
    I should describe the computer specs, duh:

    Windows 7 64bit
    Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 @ stock speeds
    6gb ram on three chips 3x2gb
    ATI Radeon HD 4800

    Stock fan for the GPU, super awesome enhanced heatsinkage for the cpu.
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  • NeonSpyderNeonSpyder &quot;Das est NTLDR?&quot; Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
    I ran a stability test for the CPU which ran them at 100% for about 2 minutes. The temperatures didn't go above 42c which is down right glacial. So it can't be an overheating CPU that leaves the power supply, right?
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  • XythXyth Avatar Join Date: 2003-11-04 Member: 22312Members
    Are there any other power-drains inside the computer you can remove? non-vital storage hard-drives or disc-drives?
    Check with other games if you haven't already.
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  • ThiefThief Ownage Join Date: 2003-08-09 Member: 19214Members, Constellation
    Either power supply or RAM stick(s) going bad imo. First of all you need to run other games and see if it happens there too, single-application failures are usually the fault of well.. the single application, though total shutdown is a bit harsh. Run other resource intensive games for a while and see if it crashes. Look in Administrative Tools > Computer management > Event Viewer to see if there are any clues in the events as to what is causing the crash. Also try running EVE with just a single stick of ram in at a time, cycling them individually if you still have problems.
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  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    A real stress/stability/torture test is something you let run for hours (I've heard ten, but I'm sure less than that'll do it).

    I assume you don't have (m)any spare parts you can swap between to narrow the issue down?
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  • NeonSpyderNeonSpyder &quot;Das est NTLDR?&quot; Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
    edited October 2010
    Ah I had not thought to look at event viewer but it suggests the following:

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


    Five of 'em today. Which strongly reinforces my PSU concerns. Well, maybe not strongly, but I don't suspect any of the other components.

    I'll test another 3d application to see what happens. I would run a cpu/ram stress test for longer but I'm suspecting that both of those are fine. If it were the ram it would probably give me a BSOD when it stopped working.

    The psu is five years old and has more then it's fair share of dust, I'm starting to think the poor old thing is on death's door and is just begging for mercy already. It's not because of an imbalanced systems ( I don't have anything that's not critical that I can take out of the system, no extra HDD or anything) so I'll have to replace it. I'm pretty sure it's 500w but it might be 700w. Will have to check before getting a new one.
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  • NeonSpyderNeonSpyder &quot;Das est NTLDR?&quot; Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
    I confess a bias which has influenced by conclusion. I suspected a PSU problem due to the sudden appearance of the shutdown issues but I've tried two other resource intensive games (AVP which can be pretty harsh on the GPU and Supreme Commander which can be harsh on the cpu) and after several long minutes (about 5 for the first game, 10 for the second) neither caused the computer to crash on me. I initially dismissed EVE as a candidate for the crashes but now cannot ignore the possibility especially not after bootgate (where one of their updates rewrote the boot.ini on people's computer, lolpocalypse)

    Now I suppose I have to fix it somehow. I'll continue to explore other possibilities and testing the PSU for problems but if AVP or Supcom doesn't cause it to drain the available power, EVE certainly wouldn't either so... it's probably not the PSU. Which is both good news and bad news, good because I can keep the PSU I have and don't have to shell out for a new one and bad because WTF the game is hardcrashing my computer?! Way to program CCP.
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  • SvenpaSvenpa Wait, what? Join Date: 2004-01-03 Member: 25012Members, Constellation
    If you want to take the stress test of both cpu and gpu to the extreme I suggest getting Futuremark game benchtest.

    Linky:
    <a href="http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/" target="_blank">http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/</a>
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  • ThiefThief Ownage Join Date: 2003-08-09 Member: 19214Members, Constellation
    Dying ram will usually give a bsod, but not always. A complete eve whipe and reinstall and testing each ram stick are two of the easiest things you can do to narrow down the cause.
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  • NeonSpyderNeonSpyder &quot;Das est NTLDR?&quot; Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
    Just ran 3dmark vantage (uh 2010 I guess) and it didn't crash. So obviously the computer can handle stress no problem so it can't be the PSU anymore, right?

    And since numerous other applications haven't caused so much as a hiccup in the computer I can't consider it to be anything else then the application.

    I've already run a dozen different programs of varying graphics levels and intensiveness for varying lengths of times and nothing has caused a crash except EVE. In fact I just did an EVE re-install (steam) and it crashed in the first second of loading the main game window after logging in. The steam install had no remnants of the previous cache and user settings (as it had to redownload the game cache and it had default settings and no memory of log ins)

    So... CCP programmers hate me and my computer. It's the only logical conclusion.

    I'll continue to experiment but I've sent CCP support a petition, I guess they'll get back to me whenever they feel like it.

    I'm somewhat pleased and somewhat infuriated but at least I don't have to buy any new components, but still... hard crash? Come on. That's just not nice.

    Thanks for your quick help everyone. I'll let you know how it turns out and if anything new crops up.
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  • SentrySteveSentrySteve .txt Join Date: 2002-03-09 Member: 290Members, Constellation
    This isn't helpful or encouraging, but I had this exact problem of my computer unpowering itself. <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=111143&hl=" target="_blank">Eventually it turned for the worse</a> and I suspect it was my PSU which caused some failure and also shorted out my mobo.
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  • ScytheScythe Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 46NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation, Reinforced - Silver
    I'd say Eve would use more memory than any of those other games you mentioned. Try booting up memtest86 and let it run <b>for at least two hours</b> and see what it reports.

    --Scythe--
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  • PaniggPanigg Join Date: 2006-11-02 Member: 58212Members
    I had the same thing happening. You should download all windows 7 updates. There is one, I think, network driver that causes the crashes.

    Just try downloading any windows updates for now that might help.
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  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1801795:date=Oct 17 2010, 05:23 AM:name=Scythe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Scythe @ Oct 17 2010, 05:23 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1801795"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'd say Eve would use more memory than any of those other games you mentioned. Try booting up memtest86 and let it run <b>for at least two hours</b> and see what it reports.

    --Scythe--<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Here's one I suggest: Run the full test suite. Then run the three hour bitfade test. Then the full test suite again.

    Also, I advise caution: Just because memtest86+ finds memory errors, you can't be certain your memory is broken, and that replacing it will solve the problem. In one case I had accidentally undervolted my memory, which, while perfectly harmless to the hardware, did cause happy error funtime. Setting the correct voltage fixed that problem. In another case, the GPU of all things was faulty, and since it does some fairly low-level stuff with the north bridge and the north bridge also handles memory...
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  • AlignAlign Remain Calm Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5216Forum Moderators, Constellation
    I was told that modern Windows installations defaults to simply hard rebooting the computer instead of showing the familiar blue screen, might that be relevant?
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  • ZiGGYZiGGY Join Date: 2003-01-19 Member: 12479Members
    edited October 2010
    nanites \o\
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  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1801823:date=Oct 17 2010, 05:08 PM:name=Align)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Align @ Oct 17 2010, 05:08 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1801823"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I was told that modern Windows installations defaults to simply hard rebooting the computer instead of showing the familiar blue screen, might that be relevant?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Anecdotally, mine went to bluescreen while doing a core dump, then rebooted. If you have the core dump disabled but have automatic restarting enabled it could reboot without ever showing you the bluescreen. However, a bluescreen should not lead to automatic shutdown. The computer should either stay on the bluescreen until the user manually intervenes, or reboot automatically.
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  • NeonSpyderNeonSpyder &quot;Das est NTLDR?&quot; Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
    Figured it out.

    It was the power supply.

    I'm not sure why it didn't crash yesterday on doing anything but EVE, but it mislead me as to the true cause. I figured out what it was in reality because the next morning when I booted the computer up it did the same power-off crash that it's been doing, but this time it did it for a different game so that threw me 'eve is glitched' theory out the window.

    So I open the case to test the ram one by one to rule out the possibility and lo and behold, the computer doesn't even want to boot up anymore! Of course if it was a problem with the ram I was testing, I would still boot but get a mobo error report and since the mobo manages to get to FF on the display (fully functional) I figured the mobo was probably fine too. So I go and get a new PSU (on sale woo!) and plug everything in. Oh my god psus are so hard to take out and also to install. The damn cables get caught on everything and the plugs are so hard... hhr, either way. Everything works now.

    Yay! Thank you SentrySteve for your valuable PSU-related suggestion.

    And of course everyone else for your help and clues, it helped narrow down the problem. You guys are my favouritest ever!
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  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1801866:date=Oct 18 2010, 07:09 AM:name=NeonSpyder)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (NeonSpyder @ Oct 18 2010, 07:09 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1801866"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Oh my god psus are so hard to take out and also to install.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Just wait until you have to swap out a mainboard. You practically have to pull the entire computer apart.
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  • DrfuzzyDrfuzzy FEW... MORE.... INCHES... Join Date: 2003-09-21 Member: 21094Members
    edited October 2010
    Hit F8 on your system boot, boot to this

    <img src="http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/Disable%20Automatic%20Restart.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
    (Disable automatic restart on system failure)

    Sometimes the bluescreen pops up so fast you dont see it and it will appear that your computer shuts off without giving an error, I see it occasionally at my job working on laptop hardware. Could also be power supply failure, a short in any part that gets power from the power supply/motherboard, overheating (check your fans/heat sinks for dust), overclocked hardware, broken USB port shorting out, incorrect settings in BIOS, might need BIOS/driver updates, theres still a slew of things that can cause it.

    I highly recommend getting PC check (boot disk diag software), it will fully check every part of your hardware and let you know about a majority of problems, though note that it can false-positive while running tests that a piece of hardware does not support (new dual core processors have this problem a lot)

    I once had a computer with shut down problems like that, turned out that the GPU fan was not working and the card also had bad memory.
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