Windows 7: Random crashes with no BSOD, tried everything.

Hi. My brother has been complaining that his PC shuts down randomly. I check the events log and find a very large list of critical Kernel power 41 errors, with no other error before them most of the times. I can't seem to find any pattern to them, so I asume it's hardware related. There's also nothing in particular he does that triggers it. I've runed memtest86 and AIDA64 stress test while checking temperatures with nothing strange, changed the PSU, formatted and clean installed Windows again,still the same. I'm about to surrender with this...



What am I missing?

run Prime95 picking the 32 or 64bit depending what your system requires.

you will show a result in about 10 mins if the Chipset , CPU or Ram is throwing up any errors and post back the exact error message here ?

otherwise take a look in your reliability monitor and see if theres any clues there, also please post some stats here such as mobo, cpu , ram gfx, and PSU etc ?

Prime95 runs without problems after 10 mins (edit:still works after 20).

Here are the system details: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/l...EsrCv3OVQ5pg1Y

PSU is brand new, just installed it today thinking it was the issue.

I also attach a copy of the event log, which as you'll see is pretty short because I formatted it yesterday.

Last but not least, reliability monitor log is also attached. It shows nothing new IMO.

Prime95 passed 3 hours, I've shut it down. Can't be the CPU, can't be the RAM (passed memtest too), can't be the PSU (changed it), and can't be the software (it's formatted and reinstalled). MOBO? Is there any way to diagnose it? I've never met such a deep problem :S

well moving away from hardware towards drivers, have you got the latest Bios > chipset drivers > sound drivers if not onboard > lan and wifi drivers > gfx drivers > anything else you can think of drivers ?

Look for a recent event or process and attempt to make the system shutdown ?

use something like CPUID HW monitor and make sure your systems not overheating ?

Drivers? The PC was fine for 3 years, after which it started doing this, no driver changes or anything, plus as far as I know, those would cause a BSOD, wouldn't they? Remember that what happens here is that the PC just "dies", like if I had pressed the power button for 5 secs :S

Where am I supposed to look for those events and processes?

About the temperatures, I just installed Speedfan on it and enabled the logging, I look at the last values before the crashes and everything is OK...

memory sticks can degrade and start to generate errors beyond stable, and software environments need constant updates , I'm not sure how you have managed to get 6gb of ram to run dual channel ?

I suggest remove two sticks and run the system with just one and see if you can get it to crash ?

please check you bios version for updates and do the same for all drivers ?

It is important to remember that until you know what the problem is , it is impossible to say what it isnt

Hi. The 6GB thing: it originally came with 8. Two months after purchase it refused to boot, one stick had brooken. I took it off and left it with 6GB, which have been runing fine to date. As I said earlier, memtest86 passed one full test without problems, shouldn't that be enough?

I'll check the BIOS, about everything else, since I reinstalled Windows 7 on it last week, it installed everything from Windows Update, except for the GPU driver, which I manually installed from the Nvidia website. Shouldn't that be enough too?

Thanks for all your time

If it was enough it would be fixed

any memory tester will only detect extreme ram faults and nothing stresses ram like an OS such as windows !

Im not here to change your mind and I equally can spare only a little time to forums as I devote my time earning money with customers that pay me so if your unsure if you need help and are not prepared to simply try my suggestions here then I will stop trying

Man, you're a genious. I would have never imagined this could happen. Removed half the sticks and the problem went away, later confirmed it's one of them that was causing it. Memory errors can cause total system crashes and still pass memtest86, I'm so amazed.

A milion thanks.