Windows 7: Morning computer just sat there unresponsive after before-bed restart

Right before bed each night, I restart my computer, so everything's fresh and ready for the next day.

The computer is configured to go to sleep after three hours of inactivity. Normally the antivirus runs at 1:30, unless it's gone to sleep, and if sleeps before antivirus (Avast!) it will run as soon as the computer wakes.

This morning, the lights and fan were on, but the computer was unresponsive. Jiggling the mouse, pressing keys, ctrl/alt/delete, nothing worked. Turning the monitor off and on showed "no signal" to the monitor. Pressing the restart button on the case got no response. So did holding down the power button for 30 seconds (normally, even with true issues, doing this will turn the computer off after five seconds).

I turned the computer off on the back of the case, and when I turned it on, everything started normally, except that I got the black and white screen mentioning an abnormal termination and asking if I wanted to start normally, or try a repair.

I picked "start normally," got to the login screen, logged in, and I used the computer normally and everything seemed to work fine.

The slightly odd things I noticed though:

• The event log showed no activity between 10:18 last night and 6:46 this morning - usually at least there's a computer going to sleep and computer waking up notice.
• The antivirus didn't run last night, and it didn't automatically start this morning, although I started it manually this morning and it ran fine to a successful complete scan, and it did automatically update its definitions as soon as the computer booted.

The only event log error going back several weeks was the power error logged this morning, when I turned the computer off by the power supply switch.



I honestly think that sometimes "once in a blue moon" odd events happen, so I'm not too too worried. As I left the room last night, the normal blue Windows shutdown screens were on, so the computer was shutting down normally. I'm wondering if it's possible that the normal shutdown sequence never completed, thus no BIOS or boot sequence, and the computer was just sitting there using power.


Ideas?

I think the shutdown was hanging. Or it was hanging on reboot.

Pressing power off/on for 5 seconds should power off whatsoever problems occur. Does that work now? If it doesn't work it's hardware related. Computer was in a strange state (either during boot or shutdown) if power on/off button doesn't work.

I think the problem happened on shutdown.

Odd things happen as you said yourself

It has happened to me also in the past i think what KaKtussoft has said is true

Try using the modern Hibernate option so power isn't kept to the RAM. It also saves everything on the desktop but shuts down the PC after writing it to HD, then it starts much faster (called a resume).

But except for your daily overkill AV scan, it sounds like what you want is a Shutdown since you're interacting with it anyway every night before bed. You can use Hibernate in place of Shutdown unless Updates are cued on the Shutdown button.

While setting the modern Hibernate function also allow Hybrid Sleep which will preserve any data in case of power loss to the RAM.

I must have just had an odd hang where the computer never shut down to the restart point. Computer has restarted fine since the time of the original post, and has responded to the start button being used to wake it from sleep. Marking thread as solved.

Very strange. Last night I happened to be taking care of other things in the room as I restarted the computer, and in the corner of my eye I saw everything going "right" up to the "Starting Windows" screen, where the Windows 7 logo is scrambling. I looked away and then there was just a black screen. But not a screen as if black were being projected to it; a black screen as if there were no video signal. I waited a few minutes and that's all I saw. Couldn't do anything with the mouse or keyboard (including ctrl/alt/delete) to rouse anything.

So I turned the computer off from the back panel (holding the power button or using the reset button did nothing), waited a few seconds, turned it on, had to power it from the front panel button.

I got the "Windows was terminated unusually" message (my paraphrase) with a choice to start normally or repair the installation. I picked "start normally" and in a few seconds, boom, there I was on a normal login screen. 10 hours later, the computer is working fine.

The event viewer shows a critical power error from the moment I manually turned it off at the power supply, but shows no other errors or warnings leading up to that or after that, and the messages seem to look the same as they normally do when I restart the computer.

So now twice in about six weeks I've had this odd behavior happen, and I can tell from happening to watch the restart cycle last night, just by accident, that the computer shut down normally, went through BIOS okay, and got to the "Starting Windows" screen before something goofy (that I missed) happened.

Any ideas?

Seems like you're telling a horror story!

Well, back to topic, do you know how to make a reboot trace? A reboot trace can help identify if something pesky starts up during start up or if something hangs during shutdown.

No I don't - can you tell me? How to set it up and what to look for?

This page will help you: Trace Windows 7 boot/shutdown/hibernate/standby/resume issues - MSFN Forum

You need to install Windows Performance Toolkit from Microsoft first. Once you do a reboot trace, members including me might be able to help you sort your problem out after having a look at the traces.

Ugh - looks like something worth doing, if the problem was persistent - but it's not.

I tried a restart this morning, and it went fine.

I did use ccleaner to look at my registry, and I had almost 100 irregularities all stemming from a Microsoft Silverlight update. I cleaned those out, and uninstalled an Apple product that I never use.

And should the problem start recurring with persistence, I will definitely do the reboot trace. Thanks.