Sleep and/or restart issue

[knottshawk]

I've got a Win7 Pro 64 bit system with a bit of an issue. It's a high end, RAID 1 (hardware configured) system. Quad core Xeon and 8GB ram... I need this system to stay running until I tell it otherwise..... but it's not. I always disable Windows updates, just for this purpose.

The first time I had a problem I came in one morning and it APPEARED the system was asleep. The power was on, the monitors were asleep, but the mouse and/or keyboard would not wake the system up. I ended up having to hard boot the system, which is bad. I assumed it could be resolved by telling it not to sleep. So, I used the power settings option and told it to never sleep.

A few weeks later, I came in and found the exact same problem. So, I did some reading and found that, within the power settings, there is an option for USB power save which can be problematic, I ran a power report and confirmed this was likely the culprit, so I disabled that feature.

Now, today, I came in and found my system had restarted on its own. I'm not sure if this is what normally occurs or not, because it hung at the bios (which is "normal" on my system when there is a USB flash drive inserted on startup). I started it up and, like it always does, it indicates it was shut down improperly. The other times it indicates this (by asking if I want to start in safe mode) I assumed it was because I had to hard boot. But this time I didn't hard boot.

So... how do I tell WHY this thing keeps restarting and WHAT is causing it? Oh, and just to head things off at the pass, this is not an issue on any other computer in my office/home and wasn't a problem on this computer when it's been running Ubuntu or WinXP. Thanks in advance...

 

[Jonathan_King]

Hello,

Have you looked in the Event Viewer to see if any errors are recorded?

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello knottshawk.


Have you ruled out the chance that the mains power flashed off/on?

 

[knottshawk]

The event viewer has entries in it, but they all appear to start when I hard booted it.
I'm not sure how this is possible since it was sitting at the bios screen when I found it. Would it just start logging an improper shutdown, etc on the next bootup?

The only relevant looking one, which was logged after I started up, says:

The previous system shutdown at 2:23:23 AM on ‎2/‎18/‎2010 was unexpected.
​

To which I reply "duh". It doesn't tell me WHY it shutdown though...

I guess I'm saying I don't see anything that would indicate why the system went down to begin with, though I'm admittedly not an OS expert.

As for the possible power issues, I've got other computers in the same power strip AND this computer has never had problems when running other OSes in the past.

 

[Zomby88]

Is it connected to a battery backup ? Are the ethernet connections having anything to do with it ? Are you positive it`s set too never sleep ?

 

[knottshawk]

No, no battery backup. Not sure what you're asking when you say "are the ethernet connections having anything to do with it"?

Am I positive it's set to never sleep? Yes. But even if it was set to sleep, why would it restart. Like I mentioned, it was at the bios screen when I came in... that indicates that it restarted for some reason.

 

[Wishmaster]

just a thought ..

In advanced power options, did you set: Never Turn Off hard Disk?
By default Win7 will turn the HDs off, after a period of inactivity.

 

[knottshawk]

Yes, that is a thought... I'm still not sure how that would cause it to restart unexpectedly like it appears to have done:

The previous system shutdown at 2:23:23 AM on ‎2/‎18/‎2010 was unexpected.
​

 

[knottshawk]

Hmm... so does nobody here know what I should look for? Am I just stuck with it restarting and not knowing why?

 

[knottshawk]

I thought I'd revisit this since I came in this morning again to find:

• Computer on, disks running
• Lights on keyboard and mouse on
• Monitor asleep
• USB unresponsive (new device plugged in would not light up)
• System unable to "wake up" (whatever that means)

So, I forced it to power off again... brought it back up, checked the event viewer and it shows this:

Log Name:      System
Source:        EventLog
Date:          3/3/2010 6:13:51 AM
Event ID:      6008
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      knottshawk-PC
Description:
The previous system shutdown at 9:02:31 PM on ‎3/‎2/‎2010 was unexpected.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="EventLog" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="32768">6008</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-03-03T13:13:51.000000000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>4087</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>System</Channel>
    <Computer>knottshawk-PC</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>9:02:31 PM</Data>
    <Data>‎3/‎2/‎2010</Data>
    <Data>
    </Data>
    <Data>
    </Data>
    <Data>136697</Data>
    <Data>
    </Data>
    <Data>
    </Data>
    <Binary>DA07030002000200150002001F009201DA07030003000300040002001F0092013C0000003C000000000000000000000000000000000000000100000000000000</Binary>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Now, despite it saying that the previous system shutdown was at 9:02 PM, I believe that's when I forced it off this morning at 6:13. Why? Because the logs don't show that "unexpected shutdown"... just this one. So, I'm guessing it locked up at 9:02 last night, becoming unresponsive, and was thus unable to log the powerdown this morning at 6:13. Maybe?

Ideas? This is more than an annoyance... it's dangerous for what this computer is used for... I desperately need ideas.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

This probably has nothing to do with your issues but have a look at the tutorial below.


But it's an idea I have and I can't remember if this has been addressed already.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/819-hibernate-enable-disable.html

 

[knottshawk]

Well, I don't know why it would only hibernate once every two weeks or so, but I checked it anyway. It was already set to never, but I did go ahead and disable the hybrid sleep also. I dunno.

I was hoping some guru here would have something to say. Bummer.

BTW, that above link has a flaw. They say to use the command powercfg -h off and then go into the advanced settings and turn hibernate to never... well, the above command removes the hibernate option from the advanced power options completely. Sooooo you CAN'T turn it to never because it isn't there!

 

[Jonathan_King]

Well, I don't know why it would only hibernate once every two weeks or so, but I checked it anyway. It was already set to never, but I did go ahead and disable the hybrid sleep also. I dunno.

I was hoping some guru here would have something to say. Bummer.

BTW, that above link has a flaw. They say to use the command powercfg -h off and then go into the advanced settings and turn hibernate to never... well, the above command removes the hibernate option from the advanced power options completely. Sooooo you CAN'T turn it to never because it isn't there!

It's disabled, which means it will never hibernate.

 

[knottshawk]

I understand... but view their instructions at the above link. They tell you to use that command, and then to go into the GUI side and set hibernate to 'never'... it's impossible!

Anyway, I digress...

So.... any other neato ideas? Or am I stuck shutting this thing down every night?