Event Viewer help? Need to diagnose unexpected shutdown on new build

I just rebuilt with a new motherboard, new Intel 6600K, and new RAM. It's assembled on a table top rather than in the case. All other parts are from an earlier build but believed to be in good shape.

I went to sleep about 14 hours ago with my PC still running. I was doing a backup job that would take a few hours, so I just slept.

6 hours later I woke up and notice that the CPU fan is not spinning. Panic. I didn't know if the motherboard had failed, the fan had failed, or even if the PC was running. Nothing displayed on the monitor.

I shut down and rebooted successfully, getting the "Windows did not shut down properly error".

Looking at logs, I see that the backup job completed at 1236 pm and that the Windows shut down at 1237, one minute later. Coincidence? Maybe.

Windows Reliability History gives no info beyond mentioning the unexpected shutdown.

Event Viewer may have more info, but I'm not familiar enough with it to find anything useful.

Do you have any specific help on Event Viewer?

Also interested in any ideas you may have on the cause.

The local power company says there were no failures today in my area.

The PC appears to be working OK for the last 8 hours since I restarted.

The backup job did in fact complete successfully. All files were copied as expected.

I re-ran the backup job to see if the PC would shut down when it finished a second time. It did not.

The new hardware has less than 100 hours of time on it and I need to determine if I need to RMA or if this was just one of those occasional unexplainable things that can happen.

Any diagnostic ideas especially welcome. I have no tools beyond screwdrivers. Power supply is a highly regarded unit that has been flawless and is less than 2 years old.

I'll do that David, next time I go to sleep. I think memtest takes an hour or so for each pass.

Not sure how much faith to put in Memtest. I ran it for a few minutes a few minutes ago and it said I had DDR 3 RAM, which won't even fit into the slots, let alone boot.

I did run Windows Memory Diagnostic a couple of days ago and it showed no errors.

Hi,
That is strike 2
There were only 3 bad reviews on Newegg but one or two did say something about crashing under load.

Not a cheap test but my brief usage of G Skill ram was not good of course it was ddr3
I'd try Corsair
What is the other option rma another board ?

ThrashZone said:

Hi,
That is strike 2
There were only 3 bad reviews on Newegg but one or two did say something about crashing under load.

Not a cheap test but my brief usage of G Skill ram was not good of course it was ddr3
I'd try Corsair
What is the other option rma another board ?

Strike 2 for what?

3 bad reviews of what and why should anyone pay much attention to a Newegg review?

What has G Skill RAM got to do with any of this?

This is your second z170 asrock board isn't it
The first was rma'ed ?

I would chalk it up to a "fluke", unless it does it again. Maybe the backup program was inadvertently set to do something and the reason?

I have one PC with 16GB of GSkill memory and another with Corsair. Both work without problems.

Event Viewer help? Need to diagnose unexpected shutdown on new build

This tutorial by Brink should be helpful.

Event Viewer - Open and Use in Windows 7