Need help diagnosing random shutdowns

[fredhe12]

I'm trying to help my brother with a problem he's been having with his PC. Recently his machine intermittently keeps shutting down completely (not a restart or reboot). Sometimes a simple click of the power button is needed and it restarts fine, other times hitting the power button results in a two or three second start but it powers off again - only after several minutes does it restart.

He's had trouble identifying any trends, i.e. it doesn't happen with any regularity during any one activity such as gaming or DVD burning. It doesn't happen after any specific period of time. Sometimes it's after a few minutes, other times it's on for days before a power down. The only trend we notice is that its all very random!

I suspect it's a power issue and might be his PSU. All other components have been running problem free for some time now and there have been no major hardware or software updates recently.

Does this sound like a PSU issue? Any other possible culprits we should examine?

Thanks all.

 

[Okasa]

what exactly happens when it freezes/shuts down. everything is fine then "pop" its off? or does it look funny then turn off?

 

[anotherbrianm]

Is there are core dump or any kind of *.dmp file that gets created when the shutdown happens?

 

[fredhe12]

Originally posted by: Okasa
what exactly happens when it freezes/shuts down. everything is fine then "pop" its off? or does it look funny then turn off?

Poof, it's gone! Just powers off.

 

[fredhe12]

Originally posted by: anotherbrianm
Is there are core dump or any kind of *.dmp file that gets created when the shutdown happens?

I'll look for such a file. Anything that would immediately alert me to this happening?

Interestingly enough, Windows restarts normally and I don't get any message saying it shut down improperly.

 

[Okasa]

if you have any extra parts lying around that you know work like psu, ram, etc, you should try swapping them in to see if it still happens. this way you can hopefully narrow it down to a culprit...unless there are two problems in the system, which would really suck

 

[gtjr]

post the pc specs in trouble.....

 

[anotherbrianm]

Originally posted by: fredhe12

I'll look for such a file. Anything that would immediately alert me to this happening?

Interestingly enough, Windows restarts normally and I don't get any message saying it shut down improperly.

Is this still a problem? Did you find a .dmp file?

In your system properties > Start up and recovery options make sure "Write an event to the System log" is checked and "automatically reboot" is unchecked this way you will see the BSOD and you can jot down the problem listed in the last couple of lines. Usually you can google the error and figure out what might be the problem.

B

 

[fredhe12]

Thanks for checking back in on this topic. My bro just simply decided that it must be the power supply, so he went out and bought an Antec TruePower 2.0 and he's good to go. He says the problem hasn't reoccured since and he's had his PC on continually for a week.

Guess that was the problem. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[anotherbrianm]

oh cool glad to hear he solved it