Windows 7 Unexpected full shutdown problem

TKR99

New Member
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
I've had Win 7 Pro on my current machine (self-build) for 5 or 6 months now with no prior problems until this past fortnight when I've now run into repeated full shutdowns unexpectedly with no warning/error msgs prior to or on rebooting. Given how most other shutdown issues related to Win 7 do seem to provoke an error msg or at least a restart, I'm wondering if perhaps this is more of a hardware issue but given nothing's showing itself very obvious (i.e. no excessive dust, all fans working, temps ok, nothing loose or overheating, etc) I'm at a loss as to how to better pin down the likely culprit. :frown:

It's happened in all different settings - with 1 program running or 7, Firefox or IE, etc, so hard to pin it on a program, and to my (limited) knowledge, I've a vague notion that such problems do tend to be more hardware than software related, but would appreciate some additional input from all you smart people on here, who can hopefully point me in the right direction. Any utilities I could run that might help - I've already tried the temp checkers etc?? :cool:
 
Check the event logs for events related to the crash.

You should also disable automatic restart on system failure, this will make sure Windows displays the BSOD, rather than just restarting.

Link Removed due to 404 Error

That should show you how.
 
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Still unsure..

Thanks so much Mitchell - sadly error logs haven't shed much light on the problem - first one said it was the VSS (??), next one linked to a "SidebySide" module which on investigation gave me no info of value I could do much with as I don't have Server 2003 on nor any of the other things that it seems to be linked to, and the last one linked it to Outlook and a memory issue, which might be the more likely culprit. I'm only running on 2 Gb Ram and know that Win 7 is hungry for plenty so it might possibly be worth an increase if it keeps on happening. I'm more concerned about my Sata drives though and want to ensure 1 of the 3 isn't perhaps about to expire as I've seen that linked to this type of problem, but running diagnostics will have to wait until overnight as I'm on the PC all day long so no time to set back for them just now. However, I think I'll go and sort out my weekly backup a bit earlier than usual and ensure at least I'm not about to lose any valuable data over it.

I have changed the restart settings though so will see if that nets me any info of interest next time (if it happens again soon).

Appreciate your timely input though - helps plenty.
 
Weirder & weirder

Ok - tonight I had a similar problem occur once again, only this time it put the PC into Sleep mode rather than the full shutdown. So no BSOD to give me any ideas of what's going on but the Events logs are full of Warnings and Errors - I'm just providing the last 2 mins worth before it went to sleep - I can't make any sense of some of them so maybe you can :p Apologies for the formatting - no doubt there's an easier way to present this info, but I'm too tired just now to think laterally. :frown: What also surprised me was a number of errors stating the system had restarted this evening yet I know it hasn't done so since 2 days ago! I've no memory issues apparently, so my next step (for peace of mind) tonight is to run a full disk check on my drives overnight to see how they fare. Still unsure whether it's perhaps a software issue as I note Firefox popping up a lot in the list. Anyway - make of the 2 logs what you can - one is Admin events & the other System. I'm off to bed now so will figure out the next step tomorrow :cool:

Level Date and Time Source Event ID Task Category
Information 25/04/2010 00:06:02 Service Control Manager 7036 None The WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service service entered the running state.
Information 25/04/2010 00:06:02 Service Control Manager 7036 None The Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) service entered the running state.
Information 25/04/2010 00:06:01 Service Control Manager 7036 None The TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service entered the running state.
Warning 25/04/2010 00:05:58 Microsoft-Windows-Time-Service 134 None NtpClient was unable to set a manual peer to use as a time source because of DNS resolution error on ''. NtpClient will try again in 3473457 minutes and double the reattempt interval thereafter. The error was: The requested name is valid, but no data of the requested type was found. (0x80072AFC)
Warning 25/04/2010 00:05:58 Microsoft-Windows-Time-Service 134 None NtpClient was unable to set a manual peer to use as a time source because of DNS resolution error on ''. NtpClient will try again in 3473457 minutes and double the reattempt interval thereafter. The error was: The requested name is valid, but no data of the requested type was found. (0x80072AFC)
Warning 25/04/2010 00:05:54 Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Client 1014 None Name resolution for the name isatap.Belkin timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded.
Information 25/04/2010 00:05:50 Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General 1 None The system time has changed to ‎2010‎-‎04‎-‎24T23:05:50.500000000Z from ‎2010‎-‎04‎-‎24T23:04:28.772592800Z.
Information 25/04/2010 00:04:27 Service Control Manager 7036 None The TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service entered the stopped state.
Information 25/04/2010 00:04:27 BROWSER 8033 None The browser has forced an election on network \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{535D3CDC-62D5-47F4-94FF-A93E66BCF338} because a master browser was stopped.
Information 25/04/2010 00:04:26 Service Control Manager 7042 None "The TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service was successfully sent a stop control. The reason specified was: 0x4003

Level Date and Time Source Event ID Task Category
Warning 25/04/2010 00:05:58 Microsoft-Windows-Time-Service 134 None NtpClient was unable to set a manual peer to use as a time source because of DNS resolution error on ''. NtpClient will try again in 3473457 minutes and double the reattempt interval thereafter. The error was: The requested name is valid, but no data of the requested type was found. (0x80072AFC)
Warning 25/04/2010 00:05:58 Microsoft-Windows-Time-Service 134 None NtpClient was unable to set a manual peer to use as a time source because of DNS resolution error on ''. NtpClient will try again in 3473457 minutes and double the reattempt interval thereafter. The error was: The requested name is valid, but no data of the requested type was found. (0x80072AFC)
Warning 25/04/2010 00:05:54 Microsoft-Windows-DNS-Client 1014 None Name resolution for the name isatap.Belkin timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded.
Error 25/04/2010 00:04:24 Bonjour Service 100 None Task Scheduling E
 
Bump me on this tomorrow, as I've got to go now, and I already marked this as read an have a terrible memory :D
 
Lol

Oh I'm SO glad to meet someone else with memory issues LOL!! One (or more) of my rheumatic conditions causes memory and cognitive dysfunction and the only reason I'm in any way organised is because I LIVE on my PC and use Outlook constantly to remind me about things. When I'm away from home, then I'm REALLY in trouble :D!!

Appreciate your willingness to stick with this one :)
 
Thanks for the reminder ;)
I just have CRSS (can't remember sh*t syndrome;))
Those events are both related to your internet connection, so no worries there.
Are you sure there's nothing else in the logs?
Has the blue screen occurred again?
 
Quiet..

Nah - thankfully it's behaved itself today at least with no hiccups. I've not yet run full drive diagnostics as yet, but superficial ones are coming up "Excellent" with regards to health etc, so at least that's encouraging. But really nothing much else in the logs that I could see of any interest around the time of the previous reset. But I'll keep monitoring and let you know if I manage to gain any better info if it happens again - at least it seems to have settled itself today but it's been that erratic at times, hard to know. It hadn't happened for at least 2-3 wks and then I've had 5 occasions in the past 4-5 days so hard to tell.

But thanks anyway Mitchell - keep you posted.
Romayne
 
FAO: Mitchell - another one :(

Things have run fine until today when I'd only opened up one program after booting up which was a System Info one which I've used a few times over the past 2 weeks without problem, but this time the system decided to once again do a full and immediate shutdown - I should perhaps clarify that this isn't a "normal" shutdown where you see programs closing and the system closing itself out - this is just a complete PC shutdown in the space of a second as if someone had pulled the plug on it. Again, on rebooting the only hint of a problem is that sometimes it will give you the option on booting in safe mode but not always - quite often it just boots up normally and never provides any error messages at any point to clarify what instigated the fail.

I'm still concerned this is maybe more of a hardware issue than software but have nothing to give me any clues where to look - all the systems software programs I've run come up clear of any obvious (major) issues and all fans are operational and nothing appears to be overheating etc.

Think I'll start keeping a log of events and try to see if there's anything in the least that happens prior to each one, and hope that if they are being triggered by a hardware fault that it doesn't escalate to any degree before we pin it down.

Once again the event log's not really giving many hints, but you might have more insight to it than me - I've just grabbed the couple of events immediately prior as TBH the rest of the log is pretty much identical with nothing saying it couldn't load or any other prior warnings etc:

Level Date and Time Source Event ID Task Category
Error 01/05/2010 11:14:16 EventLog 6008 None The previous system shutdown at 11:11:24 on ‎01/‎05/‎2010 was unexpected.
Information 01/05/2010 11:13:57 Microsoft-Windows-FilterManager 6 None File System Filter 'Lbd' (6.0, ‎2009‎-‎08‎-‎28T10:02:18.000000000Z) has successfully loaded and registered with Filter Manager.
Information 01/05/2010 11:13:57 Microsoft-Windows-FilterManager 6 None File System Filter 'FileInfo' (6.1, ‎2009‎-‎07‎-‎14T00:21:51.000000000Z) has successfully loaded and registered with Filter Manager.
Information 01/05/2010 11:13:54 Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General 12 None The operating system started at system time ‎2010‎-‎05‎-‎01T10:13:54.359599800Z.
Information 01/05/2010 11:11:39 Service Control Manager 7036 None The Windows Media Center Scheduler Service service entered the running state.
Information 01/05/2010 11:11:32 Service Control Manager 7036 None The Application Experience service entered the running state.
 
What I should have said in that last post is that I've only realised those 2 dumps were from much earlier in the year, and for whatever reason none of the last 4 have been recorded including one just 10 mins ago, and discovered the reason why - somehow I'd missed setting the dump to a small dump and instead it's been doing the full kernel one - now, if those HAVE been saved, and are any use to you, you'll have to let me know where to find them to provide instead perhaps. Failing that, it looks like this is going to continue to happen, so now that the settings are changed, hopefully I'll finally get a proper log for you to work with. Just have to be patient :redface:
 
I hadn't gotten around to looking at those logs yet, I've been busy all weekend. You can upload the new mini-dumps at your leisure.
 
Still haven't forgotten, got a sticky note on my desktop ;)
I'll try and get back to you this weekend.
 
Here we go again..

Well, took a week again (wonder if that means anything LOL) and once again the same thing has happened. For whatever reason no dumps are being written and I've checked the instructions again but no go. The only additional info I can add of any possible value is that on a cold restart afterwards, the system routinely hangs on the "initialising USB devices" requiring a reset after which it will go on without incidence, and it does offer the Safe Mode startup which I don't usually bother opting for. Still no hint of any problems anywhere else on the system. However, I'm noticing that my FIrefox tends to get rather ridiculously huge (usually because I've opened up about 8 tabs!) so I might try switching to IE for a while in case it's just causing some kind of memory dump (?)

Any ideas on how I might better get a dump to occur or source some other info on the problem in another way maybe?
 
OK, well in that case, has it been exactly one week since the last crash?
Maybe it's an event being triggered that's causing the problem.
 
Doubt it's that simple to be honest as I really don't think it's been a weekly problem - I definitely had a run over a couple of days, but looks like it's going to be quite tough to pin down just what the cause is. I'm going to stay clear of Firefox for a week or more and also do some further disk housekeeping (registry defrag etc) and see what else happens. More frustrated by not being able to find a consistent pattern of problem even in the error msgs I have come across in the Events viewer and in fact, last night's shutdown didn't have anything at all flagged up just prior. Really frustrating me though, and as I've learnt with other such problems, i'm going to have to be disciplined in keeping a diary now of exactly what was running at the time, along with times/dates etc, and see if a pattern does develop. So looks like we may just put it to bed for another lock of weeks as this is only going to frustrate you as much as me (if not more so) as you'd probably need to have access to a lot more on the PC to have any hope of figuring it out.

Still appreciate your input and might just PM you the next time depending on whether or not there's anything of interest to the wider community to share on it if that's ok?

Thanks again, Romayne
 
Check your PC for dust and dirt, as it could also be a heat problem.
Feel free to PM if you want, I'll be sticking around on this one.
 
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