Computer Hope
Microsoft => Microsoft Windows => Windows 10 and 11 => Topic started by: Cloby on January 27, 2018, 01:58:27 AM
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Current Specs
CPU: A8-6500 APU (3.5GHz stock, 4.1GHz turbo)
GPU: R7 240 2GB
RAM: 12GB DDR3 1600MHz 1.5V (2x2GB 2x4GB)
PSU: Corsair 450w (CX450M)
HDD: WD 1TB Blue
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
(The computer is a pre-built. Model: HP Pavilion 500-326na. No overclocks.)
The computer randomly restarts sometimes without any warning. This normally happens every 1-3 days. It has happened when under full load and also idle, so I very much doubt that it is a temperature issue. When it happens there is no BSOD, no "restarting" blue screen, no nothing. Just straight up off and on again. In the event viewer, i get the error "Critical Kernel-Power 41 (63)". I've had this issue for a few months now and it's driving me crazy. >:(
(Will provide logs, files and screenshots if needed)
Things I've done to try and resolve the issue:
- Purchased new PSU - Didn't fix it
- Purchased new RAM to replace the old - Didn't fix it
- Reinstalled windows - Didn't fix it (Tried 3x times)
- Ran multiple system tests and scans such as memtest - All came back clear, no errors.
- Ran multiple anti-virus and anti-malware scans - All clear, nothing found.
- Cleaned the computer of dust - Didn't fix it, certainly not a heat problem.
- Switched Power outlets - Didn't fix it.
- Tried the most common "quick fix" solutions I could find - Didn't fix it
- Changed windows 10 updating settings to not automatically restart - Didn't fix it.
No joke, I literally can't afford to keep buying random new parts and hoping it fixes the issue. Is there anyway to find out how to fix the issue or to find what exactly is causing the issue?
Any help will be very much appreciated.
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I would suggest adding a battery backup. And make sure the computer is plugged into the battery backup plug vs just the surge plug. This will completely eliminate the chances that the power to your computer getting interrupted from a short dip in power. This will also protect your computer for short power outages as well as power surges etc. You can get one for around $50.
If the problem continues after this then it could be something with the motherboard or APU.
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I'm pretty certain that there aren't any issue with the power outlets since every other electronic device I use doesn't have this issue.
Is there anyway to tell if it's the Mobo or CPU for sure? (I've already check the motherboard for faulty / bad looking capacitors, didn't find any)
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Are any other devices a PC?
PC's are very sensitive to the slightest fluctuations in power to the home. A friend of mine had an apartment and couldnt figure out why his computer would randomly crash. He too tried different outlet etc. It wasnt until he added a battery backup that the problem was fixed. The issue was his power was shared with another tenant and he didnt know that at first until he realized that the battery backup with click to intervene one day when his neighbor was using the microwave when he left his door to apartment open for a friend and heard the neighbor next door start the microwave oven to make popcorn. He ended up contacting the landlord to check into why both tenants had shared power, it was because it use to be a large house that was bought and converted into an apartment. Landlord said your rent covers the electric bill so I never thought to put each person on their own meter. And something along the lines of that he isnt going to rewire the apartments to be on their own power. The good thing is that the battery backup was his solution. It might not be your solution for this or maybe it could be. Its not a bad power protection device to have with every PC to protect your hardware and data.
As far as if its the Motherboard or APU. That would be the same troubleshooting method as what you have already been doing which is replacing components in hope that the problem goes away and when it goes away you then know the cause. Stress testing doesnt make it act up though and thats where it points my troubleshooting skills back to the power to the PC, in which the battery backup will eliminate this if its the problem. If its not the problem you will have protection that you didnt have before. :) You have already replaced the power supply with a good name brand power supply, so thats eliminated from cause. And all connections on the inside are secure and proper vs intermittent I am assuming. * wiggling a plug with very little force to see if you can get it to crash could be a troubleshooting method for a intermittent connection, but it can also damage hardware. Going to assume this is not the case and its still power related to the PC which is the more probable cause.
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This is from dictation.
Here is a general method to help anybody determine if the problem is from software or from hardware. The amount of time this method involves may very but expect it can take anywhere from 4 to 12 hours to produce meaningful results.
Locate, borrow or buy a spare hard drive that is compatible with your system. Remove the existing hard drive completely and put this newly acquired spare hard drive in place install an operating system you have at hand and that you believe to be reliable. Possibly you have at hand an old copy of MS-DOS 6.22 or something like that. A copy of Ubuntu Linux would also do. Install the alternative operating system.
Now then start up some program that will give you some sort of graphical interface or please something that will stay on the screen and give you a visual clue. Not just walk away and leave the computer by itself if your computer customarily reboots in every three hours, you should have your answer by the time four hours has gone. But to be sure, you might even wait overnight.
If you come back later and you see that would have you had on the screen before is gone and the system has rebooted, then you know there is some kind of crooking your hardware that is causing the system to reboot. Otherwise, whatever message you had put on the screen would still be there. Of course, the thing is probably going into sleep mode or hibernate mode, and if so, you can touch a key in the keyboard and the system will come back to life.
This method usually resolves a question of whether not so hardware the software. Basically what we did is just replace the hard drive and the operating system to see if that made a difference in the behavior. Most of the time you'll find that is not the hardware at all, it was something to do with the operating system or some program that is is operating in the background.
End of dictation.
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I tried leaving the system running at a friends house for a couple days; It still has the problem. So it 100% isn't a power issue.
Also tried a running Linux distribution (Lubuntu to be exact) on another hard drive, again, it didn't fix the issue.
Seeing as I've tested everything else, it's gotta be the motherboard right?
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Download BlueScreenView:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html
unzip downloaded file and double click on BlueScreenView.exe to run the program.
when scanning is done, go to EDIT - Select All
Go to FILE - SAVE Selected Items, and save the report as BSOD.txt
Open BSOD.txt in Notepad, copy all of the content, and paste it into your next reply
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Note:...could still be a power issue depending on which PSU you bought...
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It's not a blue screen issue, BSView comes up with nothing. No logs, no nothing.
The PSU is perfectly fine. Works without issue on other systems + it's only a few weeks old.
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It's not a blue screen issue, BSView comes up with nothing. No logs, no nothing.
Okay. Just to be sure, please go to System Properties - Advanced - Startup & Recovery Settings and UNcheck "automatically restart". Either way, there's no harm in changing that setting.
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+ 1
One of the dumber default MS settings....i've seen many others.
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This is from dictation.
Did he say he tried a Linux distribution and it had the exact same behavior? And he even took it to a neighbors house and showed the same exact behavior?
That is very hard to understand. Are there any other indications that something is going wrong? Such as loss of time and date, or extremely slow Internet connection or anything to indicate a major hardware fault.
Here's my best guess. Something has got into the firmware, either a very strange setting, core very improbably some kind of virus in the firmware. The possibility of a virus firmware is almost impossible because people who make viruses find their much easier targets than people's firmware.
Anyway, if it is a firmware issue, the solution would be to greet install new firmware by downloading the firmware update from the manufacture and going through the update process. In very rare cases the firmware becomes unreliable and this is near impossible to troubleshoot with ordinary tools. The only diagnostic is to try flashing the firmware again and see if that changes the behavior.
I am only mentioning this because the things that reported seem to be so unlikely and improbable.
End of dictation.
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"Critical Kernel-Power 41 (63)"
It's not a blue screen issue, BSView comes up with nothing. No logs, no nothing.
The PSU is perfectly fine. Works without issue on other systems + it's only a few weeks old.
This tells us nothing...What Make and Model PSU is it ? ?
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I've already tried the "uncheck automatically restart", no luck unfortunately.
The power supply is the Corsair CX450M (Like I've already said, it certainly not a power supply or outlet issue). The system starts to randomly freeze now too, causing me to have to switch it off and on again.
"Did he say he tried a Linux distribution and it had the exact same behavior?" - Yes, with a new hard drive too.
"And he even took it to a neighbors house and showed the same exact behavior?" - Yes.
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So am I correct that the one thing that has been constant through all your attempts is the motherboard?
Is it possible that you have determined that's the only thing that could still be causing the problem?
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The only parts on the motherboard easy to replace are:
RAM
CPU
Heat Sink and fan
Question:
When you say 'restart', do you mean
1. A power off ant the restart?
2. Or the power was off and it starts by itself?
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"is it possible that you have determined that's the only thing that could still be causing the problem?"
The only things it could be are:
Not sure how likely it is to be the last 2. I was pretty confident that it was the PSU to begin with, clearly it wasn't.
"When you say 'restart', do you mean"
1.
It's like a normal restart, just without any blue "restarting" screen or any warning at all. Just power off and on again in an instant.
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"When you say 'restart', do you mean"
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It's like a normal restart, just without any blue "restarting" screen or any warning at all. Just power off and on again in an instant.
Does it return to where you were? Does it close the current program?
How long does it last? Less than 8 seconds? If so, it was not a restart. It takes the firmware some 20 plus seconds to find the boot device and load the Windows boot loader. Then Windows takes some more time. And there will be an entry in the event log.
You may have a CPU or even a monitor that has hiccups.
No, I did not make that up. It is documented elsewhere; Here is only of many:
http://spywarehammer.com/general-computer-issues/computer-%27hiccuping%27/
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The computer sort of freezes/hiccups, it is really hard to explain. What happens is for a very short time, like 1/2 second the mouse freezes, and audio and video freeze but dont skip, and resumes at where it first 'hiccuped'. This can happen infrequently maybe once a minute to sometimes constantly, 1/2 sec apart from one another in an extreme case which again, seems random. Sometimes i go hours without anything at all
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Not so rare. My system behaves in a similar way but perhaps not as often, as yours seems to be a bit irritating to you. I should first say that overclocking would be a suspect...it's never really a good idea, even the manufacturer will caution against it.
Another...
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/291605-28-computer-skipping-hiccups
and now sometimes, the mouse freezes up in the same manner. This little hiccuping that occurs just makes it impossible to listen to audio, play movies, and for most games it slows the computer down a lot. I replaced my Radeon 5770 with a crappy 8500 GT and it still happened im starting to think its not my video rather than something else maybe a CPU related problem or such.(It isnt a overheating problem all my components are ...
Another is when some kind of 'glitch' gets into the system and disturbs something. This can cause a monitor to go black and then come back on. I think it is a Windows behavior when there is an apparent change in the hardware. I do not really know. But it has been widely reported for years. An old post:
https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/my-computer-is-getting-hiccups-95360/
My computer is getting hiccups
by scorpsteals / March 28, 2005 2:21 PM PST
Somebody please help. I am running Windows XP SP1 and my computer kinds of gets still for half a second every 4-6 seconds. So whenever I am typing it misses a character or two every 4-6 seconds. When I am moving my mouse it gets stuck at a position for a second and then gets back to normal. This keeps on repeating.
Any directions would be appreciated.
Thanks
It would seem the term 'hiccup' is used to describe a wide range of behaviors where the system stops and then continues. Duration and frequency vary. It has been reported in Windows 10 some times.
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?74157-Windows-10-short-hiccups-freezes
I have an issue since upgrading to Windows 10, the display and sound will hiccup for a split second. It is barely noticeable sometimes and might be even less than a second. This did never happen when I ran Windows 8/8.1. It happens when I listen to music, watching a video and gaming. I think it also happens when I browse the internet, but it is hard to notice. It is very noticeable when I'm watching a video or playing a gaming. It usually takes at least 1 hour before an other "hiccup" occurs. It varies a lot, though. There are no sudden CPU or HDD spikes. Everything is at normal. I tried the performance troubleshooter and nothing was found. All my drivers are also up-to-date. I have also installed all chipset drivers and LAN drivers for my motherboard from the ASUS website. The errors existed both before and after the installation of the drivers. My installation of Windows 10 is also a clean install, so I did format my SSD. Anyone else here have the same experience or have an idea what I can do? Other than to rollback to Windows 8, but it seems related to some driver to me.
Here is what I would do if it were me. I would make a backup of what is important to me. Or else get another hard drive to test. Next I would do a fujll install of the system for a clean drive. Everything. The install only a few programs I know to be trustworthy. If hat makes a difference, then it was due to some kind of error is drivers and/or software.
My experience, and that of others, shows that software errors are much harder to isolate compared to outright t hardware bugs. Or so it seems.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Here is a video: (Skip the ads.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcAlLBLKFLs
DEE Z
Published on Feb 19, 2016
Windows 10 Hangout or Freeze issues.
How to Fix Windows 10 Stuck While using.
This video will help you for fix this problem, not sure for all user.
Option is adjusting Power plan set-up.
1.Access Power option
2.choose what the power button does
3.uncheck list of shut-down settings
All rights to this video is owned DEEZ
He claims it is a bug in the power settings options in Windows.
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Imagine a full restart, with no "restarting" screen, no warnings, no BSOD and make it happen randomly. That's the issue I have.
It's not a "hiccup" as it doesn't recover. When the computer freezes, it requires me to manually turn off and turn on the computer again.
As for new hard drive / fresh install, I've already tried that. No luck.
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Cloby,
Sorry to hear that. You are at the point where you either try another power supply or get a new motherboard.
Did you nay you have some way to test the power supplies?
Search for:
test a power supply under load
I did not find a good, clear method.
The following is the best I can offer
Basically, you use some power resistors to load down the different lines coming from the supply. The supply should 'fold over' when you do 120% of the rating.
To do this, you will need a DC ammeter and a voltmeter and and two adjustable five ohm rheostats++ that can handle 200 watts short term.
start at 400 watts and then ramp up until the PSU does a 'crow bar' lock up. If the PSU is inside of its rating,then you must have a motherboard s forcing an overload. Something like a CPU, GPU or other component failure sucks current and makes the PSU quit.
++ hard to find items...
- but you can DIY with some nichrome wire used in an old electric heater.
At least one vendor on eBay sells this wire cheap.
But at this point I think it is the motherboard. :'(
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I already purchased a new PSU, it didn't solve the issue.
I'm pretty sure it's the motherboard. Guess I'll buy a new one and hope for the best. Thanks anyhow.
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UPDATE:
Is was the GPU. Thanks for all your help anyway.