Question PC shuts down during Win7 splash screen, power light remains on, sometimes works after, sometimes works after repair > restore

dookleeto

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As title says, after most recent updates, Windows 7 PC recently started shutting down during cold boot, about half way through the W7 loading screen, screen turns off, all fans spin down, everything seems to be off, except the green power LED on the front of the case stays on. At first just pressing the power button again would get it to load normally, mostly the repair option would pop up first, but sometimes wouldn't. Selecting 'start windows normally' would result in normal startup and operation, and selecting repair and restore earlier settings would also result in normal startup and operation. However today it crashes almost every time in same place, crashes during safemode startup, and sometimes during repair too.

At first I assumed it was overheating, so I opened it up to clean heatsink, found out the cpu fan wasnt spinning at all. I replaced cpu fan, and the problem persists. New fan spins up as expected. Im dont think it was overheating before because the heatsink is fairly well cooled by a case fan right next to it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
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dookleeto

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Jul 20, 2011
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Operating System
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU
AMD Phenom X3 8450 13 °C
Toliman 65nm Technology
RAM
2.00GB Single-Channel DDR2 @ 398MHz (5-5-5-18)
Motherboard
ECS GeForce7050M-M (CPU 1) 30 °C
Graphics
Acer K242HL (1920x1080@60Hz)
ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series (Gigabyte) 37 °C
Storage
465GB Western Digital WDC WD5000AAKB-00H8A0 ATA Device (ATA ) 36 °C --windows installed here
1397GB SAMSUNG HD154UI ATA Device (SATA ) 25 °C
0B SAMSUNG HD204UI ATA Device (ATA )
931GB Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 ATA Device (SATA ) 32 °C
14GB USB Flash Memory USB Device (USB )
Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH22NP20 ATA Device
Audio
AMD High Definition Audio Device

psu is corsair CX430

Im not quite sure why the SAMSUNG HD204UI shows as 0Bytes in speccy, but it is main storage drive and is working fine as far as I can see.

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I have been messing about a little this morning. The PC still shuts down from cold boot, and so far shuts down in same way if i choose 'start windows normally'

I have run repair twice today and it didnt shut down this time either time.

however I have got it running fine by doing 2 things:

1. running repair, then running a memory test from advanced repair menu. test found no errors and after restarting, loaded fine. Ran fine for 3 hours, monitored temps, all very stable, cpu at around 15C, gpu at 35C. Hard disks all showing and seem to be running fine.

2. running repair, choosing the restore earlier point option from the first pop up window. letting repair run and when it finished, windows loaded normally, and runs normally as above, again for a couple of hours with no issues.

Also, once windows has loaded fine, selecting restart from start menu results in normal startup also, and normal operation.

I also reset the bios to defaults yesterday. Didnt appear to change anything.
 
As title says, after most recent updates, Windows 7 PC recently started shutting down during cold boot, about half way through the W7 loading screen, screen turns off, all fans spin down, everything seems to be off, except the green power LED on the front of the case stays on. At first just pressing the power button again would get it to load normally, mostly the repair option would pop up first, but sometimes wouldn't. Selecting 'start windows normally' would result in normal startup and operation, and selecting repair and restore earlier settings would also result in normal startup and operation. However today it crashes almost every time in same place, crashes during safemode startup, and during repair too.

At first I assumed it was overheating, so I opened it up to clean heatsink, found out the cpu fan wasnt spinning at all. I replaced cpu fan, and the problem persists. New fan spins up as expected. Im dont think it was overheating before because the heatsink is fairly well cooled by a case fan right next to it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


Bad PSU would be the first thing to investigate. Swap in a known good spare if you have one available or bite the bullet and buy a good quality replacement for yours.
 

dookleeto

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I dont have one to test it sadly, if the psu was faulty would it run fine for hours once I am inside windows? when i get windows running, everything seems completely normal.

The shutdown also always happens at the exact same moment in windows load screen, same for safe mode. It seems strange that a psu problem would be so uniform.
 

dookleeto

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update: reinstalled windows7, it went smoothly, tried around 10 cold boots, all fine, restarts also fine.

ran checks on all the disks, no errors detected.

however twice during shutdown the computer turned off immediately after pressing the start menu option. This never happened before, it always shut down fine even when it was having the problems above. It is possible this could be a problem with display drivers not being installed, as I haven't run any windows updates or installed anything yet on fresh windows or even plugged in ethernet cable.

I will install drivers and run windows updates tomorrow and see if problem persists.
 

dookleeto

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OK, so Im pretty sure it is windows update that is causing the problem. The original problem started right after the latest updates, and I had a fresh install of windows working almost perfectly. As soon as I installed the windows updates the original problem has returned.

The updates all downloaded and installed as one, is there a way i can install them one by one and see exactly what I am installing?
 

Charseza

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May 26, 2015
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OK, so Im pretty sure it is windows update that is causing the problem. The original problem started right after the latest updates, and I had a fresh install of windows working almost perfectly. As soon as I installed the windows updates the original problem has returned.

The updates all downloaded and installed as one, is there a way i can install them one by one and see exactly what I am installing?
Try going to windows update in control panel and then I think theres a button on the left side that says something along the lines of uninstalling a specific update or w/e
 

perrynick17

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Dec 30, 2018
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probably a old graphics card with new drivers being loaded
UEFI Supported:No
so that means that you can not use a hard drive with UEFI/EFI GPT partition windows install. all drivers must be legacy and your windows instillation should be MBR or you just going to get weird stuff happening