Windows 7: Spontaneous reboots - NO BSOD

Have a pretty new ASUS notebook and in the past few days it has started doing spontaneous reboots randomly without a BSOD.



I have 6 Gbytes of RAM and my first thought was that I must be running into some bad memory. Tried running the Win 7 memory diagnostics tool manually, but I can't even tell if it is running. The power light stays on and the screen goes blank. Attempts to hit F1 to bring testing options up does nothing. I left the computer in that state for about 15-16 hours from yesterday afternoon until this morning with no change - power light still on and screen blank. I can hit the power switch when it is in this state and it will shut off. Then it will reboot, sometimes normally or sometimes giving me the B&W screen asking if I want to boot normally or in safe mode, etc.

I'm lost. The computer is a refurb and the warranty only has about 2 weeks remaining.

Update: I got it to boot up and run Memtest86. I'm running that now and will let it cook all night running that.

Sounds like progress
Does the machine run in safe mode ok

I haven't tried Safe Mode. It actually runs OK when I boot normal Windows. But then it will just reboot itself out of the clear blue for no apparent reason. Happened to me once today while I was using it and again when I was in another room.

I was looking through the log files. They're Greek to me, but I saw one message that said something about a possible memory leak.

I have to go to a meeting this evening, so I'm just going to let the Memtest86 keep running.

Does Memtest86 keep a log of the tests it runs?

If your running memtest be aware it can take a loooong time to complete (especially when you got 6GB of memory to check) and most people recommend doing a few passes to be sure but that will take time. When its done it will display results on the screen including any errors found.

If all is ok with mem post back and we can give you some other things to try

and PS welcome to seven forums

Hello and welcome Rusty had a similar problem with my desktop tester just last week - PSU dead.

So does this do this on battery and adaptor? If the problem is just on mains power then perhaps the thing is dying and maybe the battery too. Could try a new one of either and see if that works. Better still take it to the warranty place and get them to stick in a new battery and / or an adaptor

But check out what Pauly says and get back.

If this doesn't come up with something mate I'd up the warranty place for a replacement or refund real quick. Gotta be real careful with refurbs my friend.

Memtest86 did 14 passes and passed all with no errors.

I keep the notebook on the power adapter the vast majority of the time. I will try running on battery for a few hours and see if I have an incident. I don't think I've run on battery since I started having the problem.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Does anyone have any insights gleaned from my log files?

No crashes today so far. I had it on battery for a few hours this morning. Then I had to go out for a few hours so I plugged it back into the power adapter. So far, running smooth.

Yesterday, I changed some programs to not start up on boot. I wonder if I lucked into a fix? I need to go back in there because I don't remember off the top of my head what I stopped from the start-up menu. No time now. Maybe tomorrow.

If you suspect this to be caused by software entering msconfig can often be handy

Under the services tab you have the option to hide all MS services showing what 3rd party stuff is left and giving you the option to temp or perm disable it (least until you have resolved your problems is surprising sometimes what you have running that you may have forgotten about) and you also have the options of selective startup where you can tweak what you want to run

Thats a good idea Pauly and Rusty you can also set the number of cores to use as well in msconfig > Boot > Advanced options > tick the cores box > drop down the number of cores and click all.

Thanks guys, for the suggestions about stopping programs from running on startup. I now am nearly certain that there is an Adobe product (Contribute) that is causing the crashes. It was the last piece of software that I had added before I started having the crashes. After taking it off the startup list, I stopped having crashes.

Yesterday I used Contribute and I've had 3 crashes since then, even without the program running. Of course, in running it, it put itself back on the startup list. So I've removed it (and only it) from the startup list. If I continue to get crashes, I will remove other Adobe programs one by one.

Time to find a Contribute forum and see how common my problem is...

Thanks again for the help guys. This is an awesome forum with great people.