Question PC shutting off randomly but only every few weeks ?

Buglepong

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Jun 5, 2017
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Ok here's a tough one. I've had this problem on and off for years. PC will randomly shut off, no warning blue screens or anything. Not an unusual problem on its face. But here's where it gets confusing:
It will run from anytime from a week up to 3 months without the problem happening, then suddenly it will do it over and over. Runs fine in BIOS. Its probably not PSU because I have 3 and swapped them all out and problem will persist, I even took one of them to get service check and no issues from the service centre. Changed ram sticks at some point, no fix. I think i even changed Mobo at some point, cant even remember its been so long.

I think the only things i never swapped out was the CPU and GPU. Tried removing GPU and using the onboard graphics, no fix. Running a waterloop so no heat, temperatures at 30C idle and never ever get above 60C even on heavy load. But load doesnt matter, it can shut off anytime - starting windows, idle windows, playing games, browsing internet - makes zero difference.

Windows 10 Pro
Intel i5-8500 3GHz
32 GB Ram G skill
3x Samsung SSDs
Nvidia 1070

Im really just curious what could cause such a problem. Anyone have ideas? I came to the idea it was multiple bad things happening all at once with same bad result so it would be impossible to isolate, but thats just conjecture on my part. Also, windows 10 sucks.
 
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Aeacus

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Im really just curious what could cause such a problem. Anyone have ideas?

How about the main electricity grid? :unsure: That would explain the sporadic nature of it.
A good UPS fixes that. E.g line-interactive, true/pure sine wave UPS.

IMO, every PC should be backed up by an UPS. (The two main PCs that i have, have CyberPower CP1300EPFCLCD per PC.)

Also, windows 10 sucks.

Yes. And Win11 is even worse. Upcoming Win12 could be better.
 

Aeacus

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i moved house and no fix

Didn't mean your house electricity grid, instead the main, public one, from where you get your electricity from. Blackouts, brownouts, surges etc are all common main electricity grid faults and only UPS can protect against them.

E.g the place where i live, we, very rarely, get any issues from main electricity grid. Still, nothing isn't 100% solid and when the last blackout happened (lasted only few seconds, but well enough to shut down our PCs at an instant), i lost 2 hours worth of work. At that point, it was enough for me and i went and bought our UPSes. Since then (i've used UPSes for ~4 years now), UPS has kicked in 1-2 times only, to keep our PCs running.
While our UPSes have kicked in only few times, even 1 sudden power off (if we wouldn't have UPS) can cause all sorts of issues. Starting from loss of any unsaved work, continuing on to data corruption, or the very worst, killing our PSU or whole PC. <- This is something i won't take my chances on, since you can not predict electricity grid issues, to safely shut down your PC beforehand. Predicting where lightning strikes has better chances, than predicting main electricity grid issues.

And until you do not have good UPS protecting your PC, you can not rule out main electricity grid issues. Which it seems to be.
 

Buglepong

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What's the brand and model of your 3 PSUs?

Brand and model of the motherboard and RAM?

Motherboard BIOS fully up to date?

What does Windows event viewer say about the shut off?
seasonic, corsair, superflower.

mobo is asus h170 itx

i flashed the bios at some point the in past, so it was up to date at that point, dunno about now

event viewer gives me mostly 6008 and 41 errors, other than that dont really understand what it says
 

Buglepong

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Models of the 3 units are? And which order you had them? Also, which of the three is currently in use?
Oh, where all 3 bought brand new or used/refurbished? And what is their age (from purchase date)?
i bought them all new years ago. seasonic was first, then superflower then corsair. ive rotated each of them out several times over the years. other than that i dont remember its been too long
 

EntropicSoul

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I didn't see this post despite looking for something along these lines before making my own post about my main electrical grid in my town. I will get an UPS and see if that solves my problem.
 

Buglepong

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And until you do not have good UPS protecting your PC, you can not rule out main electricity grid issues. Which it seems to be.
Its good advice, but i dont think its the problem in this case. I live with several people and we working from home we all have PCs/laptops hooked up to the same power grid, sometimes even the same outlet.
 

Aeacus

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seasonic was first, then superflower then corsair.

Model numbers are still needed, since while Seasonic and Super Flower, for the most part, make good PSUs, same can't be said about Corsair. Corsair sells PSUs from low quality up to great quality.
If you don't remember models, look it up form PSU label.

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Random reboots or shutdowns are mostly caused by 2 issues:
  1. CPU/GPU overheats and to prevent any damage, system shuts down.
  2. PSU fails to deliver enough power to the GPU or fails to keep smooth enough voltage for PC's operation.

Just because you have water loop (open loop? or AIO?), doesn't instantly mean there is no overheating issue. Since in the end, all are still cooled by ambient air and water loop is no better than air cooler (heatsink with fans).

And for 2nd point, it's crucial to know PSU models. E.g if you have Seasonic S12III, then that is poor PSU. A disgrace to all other Seasonic units, especially since S12III isn't made by Seasonic but outsourced to RSY. From Corsair side, e.g: VS/VX/CX/CXm are poor PSUs.

There's also a chance that main electricity grid is the issue. In this case, and as i've already said, UPS fixes the issue.
And 1% is always reserved to the ghost in the machine. Aka unexplainable event.
 

Buglepong

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ok ive tried doing something different and here's what happened:
run safe mode with networking - seems stable so far, which might indicate a driver issue, however;
a clean install of windows 10 will not fix the issue - perhaps some default drivers are incompatible, dont know which ones
made a win 7 boot usb and tried to install it - pc will sometimes turn off during the installation

i would just use safe mode with networking but it cant support wifi on my system which is a no go...
is there any method of trying individual drivers in such a way to isolate the offending one if that is the case?
 

Aeacus

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is there any method of trying individual drivers in such a way to isolate the offending one if that is the case?

There may be, however that falls deep into software troubleshooting and i'm specialized on hardware (aka it's above my paygrade). However, we have experts here who can assist you on software level, like @Colif . I'll poke around and look if i can summon some of them to here.

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Another option, to rule out if it is Windows issue, is to run any GNU/Linux distro and look, if you get the shut downs on different OS as well.

Here's link to the tool to create live bootable GNU/Linux USB drive,
link: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

It isn't hard to set it up. Though, you'd need at least 4GB USB flash drive. Oh, you can use almost any GNU/Linux distro you like. I too have live bootable GNU/Linux on a USB drive just in case my Win decides to crap out and i can't access my storage drives.

On the above link, there is also a full list of supported distros.
If you don't know which GNU/Linux distro to use, then you can go for Linux Mint (i have it installed on my USB flash drive and i prefer it over other GNU/Linux distros i've tried).
Linux Mint distro download: https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Just download GNU/Linux distro, plug in your USB flash drive, start the Universal USB Installer and follow on-screen instructions. Once the installation is complete, reboot your system and after POST, select you USB drive as bootable drive. So that your PC boots into GNU/Linux. Once GNU/Linux starts to load, it presents you several options. One of them is installing GNU/Linux to your disk drive, another is to boot into GNU/Linux from USB flash drive. Select the one that boots into GNU/Linux without installing it. This way, data on your disk drives is safe and entire OS is loaded to RAM (which makes it slow, but still bearable).
 
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Colif

Win 11 Master
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Yes. And Win11 is even worse. Upcoming Win12 could be better.
they are the same. Win 12 won't be any different. Not sure what you expect.

safe mode doesn't stress PC out as much as normal mode so it doesn't automatically make it software.
PC shutting off randomly with no BSOD isn't how windows errors work either.

what motherboard is it?
Its more likely to be hardware than windows.

tried running off an Ubuntu Live USB and see if it has any errors - https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#1-overview
though if its just random... Ubuntu might not see anything. Worth a try
 

Aeacus

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they are the same. Win 12 won't be any different. Not sure what you expect.

W11 GUI looks far worse than W10 GUI. Unsure about the underlying components.
Though, my hope was, that W12 would be as good as W7 was, but i guess that boat has sailed a long time ago. Aka no hope that Micro$oft would actually make user friendly OS, without invasion to privacy, as it has lately been with W10 and W11.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
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You can run this to test drivers out - it will cause BSOD if any drivers are to blame. It also can cause boot loops which is why I have 3 steps to do before running it - https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/driver-verifier-instructions.3686888/

set this up before you run it
Can you follow option one on the following link - here - and then do this step below: Small memory dumps - Have Windows Create a Small Memory Dump (Minidump) on BSOD - that creates a file in c windows/minidump after the next BSOD

  1. Open Windows File Explore
  2. Navigate to C:\Windows\Minidump
  3. Copy the mini-dump files out onto your Desktop
  4. Do not use Winzip, use the built in facility in Windows
  5. Select those files on your Desktop, right click them and choose 'Send to' - Compressed (zipped) folder
  6. Upload the zip file to the Cloud (OneDrive, DropBox . . . etc.)
  7. Then post a link here to the zip file, so we can take a look for you . . .
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
You confused me, you had a zip file inside a zip file... or maybe thats just Google

It took me a while to work out what was going on... more time than it should have :)
I would open folder and it wouldn't find anything as the tool only looks for certain file types, not zip.
open it in file explorer and wonder how It had a password protected column was throwing me, thinking... not seen that column before, how do I enter a password... etc.

20 minutes wasted for a conversion that took 6 minutes

Conversion of dumps

report - Click run as fiddle to see report

File: 102422-9375-01.dmp (Oct 24 2022 - 20:32:35)
BugCheck: [DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION (C4)]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for dtsoftbus01.sys
Probably caused by: memory_corruption (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 00 Min(s), and 29 Sec(s)

File: 102422-4015-01.dmp (Oct 24 2022 - 21:15:33)
BugCheck: [DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION (C4)]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for dtsoftbus01.sys
Probably caused by: dtsoftbus01.sys (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 00 Min(s), and 02 Sec(s)

File: 102422-3921-01.dmp (Oct 24 2022 - 08:01:17)
BugCheck: [SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M (1000007E)]
Probably caused by: memory_corruption (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 00 Min(s), and 30 Sec(s)

File: 102422-3906-01.dmp (Oct 24 2022 - 08:06:27)
BugCheck: [SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M (1000007E)]
Probably caused by: memory_corruption (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 00 Min(s), and 35 Sec(s)

File: 102422-3890-01.dmp (Oct 24 2022 - 20:45:36)
BugCheck: [DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION (C4)]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for dtsoftbus01.sys
Probably caused by: dtsoftbus01.sys (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 00 Min(s), and 02 Sec(s)

File: 102422-3859-01.dmp (Oct 24 2022 - 21:06:32)
BugCheck: [DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION (C4)]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for dtsoftbus01.sys
Probably caused by: dtsoftbus01.sys (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 00 Min(s), and 03 Sec(s)

File: 102422-3828-01.dmp (Oct 24 2022 - 21:28:56)
BugCheck: [DRIVER_VERIFIER_DETECTED_VIOLATION (C4)]
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for dtsoftbus01.sys
Probably caused by: dtsoftbus01.sys (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 00 Min(s), and 05 Sec(s)

File: 102422-16640-01.dmp (Oct 24 2022 - 08:05:20)
BugCheck: [SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M (1000007E)]
Probably caused by: memory_corruption (Process: System)
Uptime: 0 Day(s), 0 Hour(s), 00 Min(s), and 45 Sec(s)

Daemon tools was the cause
Jun 17 2011dtsoftbus01.sysDAEMON Tools Virtual Bus driver

i could have guessed that one had I seen drivers. There are normally 2 parts but its all by itself. Maybe a left over?
remove it.
 

Buglepong

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Jun 5, 2017
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okay so about 5 hrs ago the problem started happening again. pc ran without issues from my last post.
set the verifier to same settings, but this time i get no blue screens. it will boot in safe mode without any issues, like before.

EDIT: windows 10 finally broke (again). got a bsod with "bad system config info". tried reinstalling win10 again from usb but will get random resets during installation.

EDIT: managed to clean install win 10. still getting shut offs when not in safe mode. back to square 1

EDIT: random shut down in safe mode. clearly this time it is a hardware issue
 
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Aeacus

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EDIT: random shut down in safe mode. clearly this time it is a hardware issue

Did you try with GNU/Linux distro? To completely rule out Windows being an issue. Since while Safe Mode has most of drivers disabled and Win essentially runs in barebones mode, it isn't 100% reliable.

Hardware wise, pull out your GTX 1070, connect monitor to MoBo and run all of your tests within Win again.
This would lessen the load on your PSU and would also tell if GPU is the one who might cause the shut downs.

Also, go over all cable connections within PC, since sometimes, loose 4/8-pin EPS or 24-pin ATX have been the issue.
 
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Colif

Win 11 Master
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unlikely PSU given used 3 already

restarting in safe mode leads me to think its not windows.
Running without GPU at least removes it from possible causes.

linux working doesn't necessarily mean cause is windows... linux doesn't put PC under as much stress as windows does. It can however show hardware errors.

There have been 4 BIOS versions since your current one. They all add to system stability.
you on 2418
Current 3202

I see no tests on CPU. Since it crashes in normal mode, we can't use Intel test software.

Prime 95 Bootable - https://www.infopackets.com/news/10113/how-fix-bootable-prime95-stress-test-hardware

Prime 95 Instructions - https://appuals.com/how-to-run-a-cpu-stress-test-using-prime95/

Prime tests CPU, Ram & PSU. runs for 17 hours so I would run overnight.