Win7 x64 random reboots

[pokeefe0001]

Over the past 3 days my PC has automatically rebooted at least 5 times. It has also frozen twice (with the screen filled with garbage - a gazillion repeats of a small section of the last active window, I think). No BSOD.

I see no log entries reporting anything at the time of failure, but on reboot it logged

Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
Date: 8/24/2010 9:28:02 AM
Event ID: 41
Task Category: (63)
Level: Critical
Keywords: (2)
User: SYSTEM
Computer: Patrick-PC
Description:
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
​

and

Log Name: System
Source: EventLog
Date: 8/24/2010 9:28:08 AM
Event ID: 6008
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Patrick-PC
Description:
The previous system shutdown at 9:26:14 AM on ‎8/‎24/‎2010 was unexpected.
​

The PC is fairly new - 6 weeks old - and has been running fine until now (except for occasional hangs during shutdown of "sleep").

System info:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
Version 6.1.7600 Build 7600
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name PATRICK-PC
System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model X58A-UD3R
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz, 2794 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Award Software International, Inc. FA, 4/20/2010
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7600.16385"
User Name Patrick-PC\Patrick
Time Zone Pacific Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 12.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 12.0 GB
Available Physical Memory 10.5 GB
Total Virtual Memory 24.0 GB
Available Virtual Memory 22.5 GB
Page File Space 12.0 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
​

The C: drive is an SSD: INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC ATA Device

Any suggestions for where I begin debugging this?

FYI, The PC was custom-built by NCIX (aka. Netlink Computer Inc.) of Canada.
Win7 x64 Home was pre-installed but I upgraded to PRO a month ago.

--Pat

 

[DJROD]

Try to do the HDD check to. When that was happening to me 2 weeks ago...it was my drive. Had to buy a new one.

 

[pokeefe0001]

Any particular reason you mention my HHDs rather than my SSD C drive? (Please say "Yes". )
I don't really know what to look for in the logs, but I see that over a week ago I had a number failures writing to pagefile.sys which makes me worry about that SSD. There were no crashes that I remember (unless those were during the shutdown hangs), and there are no similar log entries at the recent reboot times. No minidumps, either.

I don't know what diagnostics are safe / recommended for SSDs. I hate doing unnecessary writes and I assume any diagnostic does a bunch of writes. And speaking of unnecessary writes, I bet I want to move pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys over to one of my HDDs - especially if I've got a flakey SSD. Yes?

 

[Petey7]

Poke, I assume that DJROD meant the system drive, in this case the SSD. Not everyone remembers to note the difference. I cannot find a test specifically for SSDs, but HD Tune should work fine. I recommend using the trial of the Pro version. It only works for 30 days, but is much better than the free version.

Also, don't worry about the limited number of reads and writes to an SSD. It will still last a lot longer than any HDD will. The pagefile is almost never used if you have 3GBs of RAM or more btw.