[SOLVED] PC Rebooting Multiple Times a Night

UltiBat

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Dec 9, 2020
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I have been having an issue where my PC will reboot unexpectedly sometimes multiple times a night. I don't know if it matters, but Event Viewer flags them as unexpected shutdowns. I have already checked Windows Update. I have a reset button, so I tried that, but the shutdown was not flagged as unexpected. Do any of you have any solutions?
 

UltiBat

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Dec 9, 2020
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I have a Ryzen 7 3700X, MSI Twin Frozr RTX 2060 Super, EVGA Supernova 650 GA, a 500GB NVMe drive and a 2 TB HDD, MSI B450 Gaming Plus Max, and the stock Wraith Prism cooler, all inside a Phanteks P300 Mesh. I use it during the day, but have never had any problems. The crashes happen at night when I am away from my computer and in bed.
 
During the night, is the PC left on performing task or just on sleep mode?
Turn off or pause Windows Automatic Updates and see if that stops the system from rebooting after active hours.
Check Task Scheduler and see if there are any task scheduled at night (under Task Schedule Library) that might trigger a reboot.
Many programs create schedule tasks at night, such as updates, that could trigger a system reboot.
 

horstp

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Jul 17, 2018
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I had this very same problem and just managed to fix it. It was indeed Windows Update and since it will only to allow you to disable these automatic updates for a couple of days, I killed the Windows Updated routine altogether using the command "run" (just type in) executing "services.msc" and finding "Windows Update" in the list, stopping it ("End" in the context menu) and setting the launch option to "Disabled" instead of "Manual" in Properties. To reactivate just run services.msc again and set it back to "Automatic" as well as selecting "Start" from the context menu where you selected "End" before.
This is at your own risk, obviously, as stopping windows from updating will make it more vulnerable and stuff.
 
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UltiBat

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I just had it restart while I was looking at an article in Chrome. No warning beforehand, just a black screen and it restarted. I'll try horstp's fix and let you guys know if it works.
 

horstp

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I just had it restart while I was looking at an article in Chrome. No warning beforehand, just a black screen and it restarted. I'll try horstp's fix and let you guys know if it works.
using a surge protector?
There is an easy way to verify if Windows Update was the culprit: Just open up Windows Update and check when updates were installed. If the day/time matches, you know. If it wasn't - the question about the surge protector pertinent.
 

UltiBat

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The update logs do not match - last update was Tuesday. I am not using a surge protector yet, I had to get some parts of my setup squared away. I'll start using it and see what happens.
 

horstp

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The update logs do not match - last update was Tuesday. I am not using a surge protector yet, I had to get some parts of my setup squared away. I'll start using it and see what happens.
Also try to check system temperatures, using a tool like MSI Afterburner. If your GPU overheats or another critical component, you will also get a hard reboot, I had that problem with my new build as well, where it would just reboot in the middle of gaming for instance.
 

UltiBat

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Dec 9, 2020
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Hi again! I was using a surge protector and it restarted again while play Cyberpunk 2077. This time I'll watch temps and see what happens. The temps shouldn't be an issue while idling though, right?
 

UltiBat

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So I was doing pretty good with a more aggressive fan curve up until last night. It looks like it restarted 3 times, two within 10 minutes of each other. There are no updates that line up with those times, but I'm going to turn them off for the time being anyway.
 
I have encountered similar looking issues when Windows update keeps trying to install an update and it fails.

Could you use Windows Reliability Monitor to see events that is causing this issue.
Click the Start menu and type 'reliability' then click on 'View reliability history'

Check the events, and click on any of them to see what happened during the time it restarted.
 

howtobeironic

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Jun 16, 2018
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By the way, do these unexpected shutdowns have the Event ID 41? That directly means that the culprit is most unlikely to be a software. ID 41 is logged if the system did not have the chance for a graceful shutdown (BSOD errors, temperature throttling, power drop, any other error that does not show you that "Shutting Down" screen, holding down power button for 15 seconds)
 

UltiBat

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Dec 9, 2020
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Yes, the events have ID 41. I said in my first post that they were being flagged by Event Viewer as unexpected. To answer jojesa's question, there are no failed updates. The only critical ones are Windows not shutting down properly. I just had a restart, and when I checked Event Viewer, it said there was a restart at 6:07 (central standard) today, when I know there wasn't one at that time. However, that log is at the time where the computer shut down.
 

UltiBat

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Dec 9, 2020
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I was just wandering around the forums, and found this post.
Hey Folks,
I have a weird one here. I had an old Crucial m500 240GB SSD that had given me problems in the past. I pulled it out of my old system and stuck it in a drawer somewhere, until I just built my new system on the ASRock X570 Taichi. I got my new system together and running, and gamed all day. Then I powered down and hooked up the old 240GB SSD and went back into my system and set up my formatting. Next day I powered up and was just web browsing and bam, had an event 41 and system randomly rebooted. I went through all the typical areas and checked my connections and powered up again. It happened another 5 time sin an hour. I remembered my old issues with that SSD and disconnected it, and haven't had the event 41 happen again since. Could an electrical short in the SSD be causing my system to random reboot like this? All of the event data in the reader were 0's so it didn't give me much info on the issue. My system specs are listed in my signature, except for my EVGA 1300 G2 PSU. Any thoughts would be awesome!
Thanks!

My NVMe drive is a 500GB Crucial P1. Could this cause a problem like this user is experiencing?
 

Globber

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I can't trace down any issues with hardware other than that one SSD, and I remember it happening on my ASUS CVFZ motherboard with FX8350 too. It is a SATA drive. Just gamed on ultra settings for a couple hours and no issues at least since I removed that SSD. Really just not sure at this point what is causing the issue.
 

Globber

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I'm right there with you man. Mine seems to be happening at random times without any kind of warning or precursor. Typing this has me scared to even mention it lol
Yeah it's pretty unnerving when you get random critical error events. I still don't know, can't seem to find anyone that has any idea either. It could have been my surge protector as well, I had to work from home today and plugged my laptop into my surge protector. The reboots were happening while the laptop was plugged in, so I don't officially know if it was that or the SSD. One thing is for certain, this 3600XT on the X570 motherboard runs MUCH hotter than my old 2600X on the X470 motherboard. My 2600X was topping out at 40C, the 3600XT is topping out at around 65-70C. Chipset is consistently running around 50-65C with some spikes on loading screens, but nothing going over 70C. 70C shouldn't be causing any reboots nor has it had any throttling on my CPU. I'll update you if anything happens again.
 

UltiBat

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I don't think it's thermal related. I have a laptop that doesn't like to game that will shut off if it gets too hot. If a thermal shutdown occurs, it's flagged as a 41, but in the logs before it, you can see it log that the temp was too high. And also the fact that it's only 70C.
 

Globber

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I don't think it's thermal related. I have a laptop that doesn't like to game that will shut off if it gets too hot. If a thermal shutdown occurs, it's flagged as a 41, but in the logs before it, you can see it log that the temp was too high. And also the fact that it's only 70C.

Yeah, my old FX CPU's would hit upper 70's on heavy overclocks, I just didn't think Ryzens were hitting that temp point so it took me by surprise to see my temps jump up after running cool for so long. Any further issues with your random reboots?