I have two machines exhibiting the same mysterious failure. About the only thing in common between them is that they are both running Windows XP with SP2 installed. One is built around an ABIT IS7 motherboard and the other is built around an ABIT IC7 G motherboard.
My wife likes to record a streaming audio broadcast from a station in eastern US that comes on before we get up in the morning, so she set up the IC7 G system in the lab to record for her since it is connected to the router by an ethernet cable. Her computer uses a wireless link that is less reliable. Each evening she would schedule the next morning's recording in the Blaze software she uses and the machine would be left on when we went to bed. A few weeks ago, when she went to retrieve the recordings in the morning she found the machine had been turned off and accused me of turning it off when I was turning my machine off the previous night. I was sure I hadn't, but the evidence certainly suggested I had. The following evening we both checked that the machine was on before going to bed -- and sure enough it was off when we got up. It is a shutdown, not a power off since there is no box saying Windows was shut down improperly etc. The machine runs cool as a cucumber -- with a Thermaltake XP90 cooler on the CPU -- and has a new 480 watt Thermaltake power supply in it. I suspected the Blaze software since it is clock programmed -- not to turn off the machine but to record. I uninstalled and reinstalled the software, and the system still shut down during the night. The machine was on an APC Smart UPS 1000 -- which is not connected to the computer with the control cable so the UPS didn't seem to be a possibility since the only thing it could do was to cut off power which would have shown up as an improper shutdown etc. Even so I swapped in a new APC Back-UPS 1500. Same thing happened. The Event log shows no record of an unusual event. Still suspicious that the Blaze software was the problem, I completely uninstalled it and left the computer turned on. Each night somewhere between midnight and the early hours of the morning when I got up to check, the machine was shutting down on its own. I purchased a new OCZ 500 watt power supply -- always blame the power supply is the first rule of troubleshooting -- and installed it. Same mysterious behavior. My wife wasn't interested in my troubleshooting, she just wanted to get back to recording her streaming audio. I have several machines in the lab, so I set up the IS7 based machine with the Blaze software for her -- and lo and behold the same problem occurred. For several days I have been running tests with this second machine. It will run all day -- cool as a cucumber too, according to SpeedFan -- with no problem, but will be shut down when we get up in the morning. Again the Event log shows no unusual events. I have checked and rechecked -- neither machine is set to hibernate nor suspend. Both are set to Always on, although I did try setting one to Home/Office Desk in the Power Options of Control Panel with no change in the behavior. The AV software happens to be different on the two machines; the IS7 based machine is running ESET's NOD32, the IC7 G based machine is running ZoneAlarm Security Suite. We have had no power outages that could explain the behavior. I do not have a recording voltmeter to monitor the line voltages, but none of our numerous clocks show any power disruptions -- and as I said the machines are on very good UPS backup.
The bottom line -- if there is one -- is that both machines are behaving as though a programmed shutdown is occurring. I can find no settings anywhere in Windows XP that could account for this and as I have said the machines have only an OS in common once the Blaze sofware was removed. I am typing this at 3:00 AM since the machine I had left on at a little after midnight was shutdown when I came down just now to check it. This same machine had run from 7:00 AM yesterday morning when I turned it back on to midnight with no problems so the mysterious shutdowns don't appear to be correlated with how long the machine has been on. Neither machine has ever shown any sign of overheating. SpeedFan will show between 38 and 41 degress for the CPU all day. The lab temperature is a steady 26.
I have run SuperAntiSpyware, Trojan Remover, Malwarebytes antimalware, Sophos rootkit software etc. without finding any malware on either machine. AV scans of the complete system shows nothing either.
In desperation, I am asking if any of you have any idea of what could be the problem.
Note added:
Both computers appear to have no other problems -- other than the apparent programmed shutdown. I have used both of them extensively during the time they exhibited this anomolous behavior and have not encountered any other failure or out of the ordinary behavior.
My wife likes to record a streaming audio broadcast from a station in eastern US that comes on before we get up in the morning, so she set up the IC7 G system in the lab to record for her since it is connected to the router by an ethernet cable. Her computer uses a wireless link that is less reliable. Each evening she would schedule the next morning's recording in the Blaze software she uses and the machine would be left on when we went to bed. A few weeks ago, when she went to retrieve the recordings in the morning she found the machine had been turned off and accused me of turning it off when I was turning my machine off the previous night. I was sure I hadn't, but the evidence certainly suggested I had. The following evening we both checked that the machine was on before going to bed -- and sure enough it was off when we got up. It is a shutdown, not a power off since there is no box saying Windows was shut down improperly etc. The machine runs cool as a cucumber -- with a Thermaltake XP90 cooler on the CPU -- and has a new 480 watt Thermaltake power supply in it. I suspected the Blaze software since it is clock programmed -- not to turn off the machine but to record. I uninstalled and reinstalled the software, and the system still shut down during the night. The machine was on an APC Smart UPS 1000 -- which is not connected to the computer with the control cable so the UPS didn't seem to be a possibility since the only thing it could do was to cut off power which would have shown up as an improper shutdown etc. Even so I swapped in a new APC Back-UPS 1500. Same thing happened. The Event log shows no record of an unusual event. Still suspicious that the Blaze software was the problem, I completely uninstalled it and left the computer turned on. Each night somewhere between midnight and the early hours of the morning when I got up to check, the machine was shutting down on its own. I purchased a new OCZ 500 watt power supply -- always blame the power supply is the first rule of troubleshooting -- and installed it. Same mysterious behavior. My wife wasn't interested in my troubleshooting, she just wanted to get back to recording her streaming audio. I have several machines in the lab, so I set up the IS7 based machine with the Blaze software for her -- and lo and behold the same problem occurred. For several days I have been running tests with this second machine. It will run all day -- cool as a cucumber too, according to SpeedFan -- with no problem, but will be shut down when we get up in the morning. Again the Event log shows no unusual events. I have checked and rechecked -- neither machine is set to hibernate nor suspend. Both are set to Always on, although I did try setting one to Home/Office Desk in the Power Options of Control Panel with no change in the behavior. The AV software happens to be different on the two machines; the IS7 based machine is running ESET's NOD32, the IC7 G based machine is running ZoneAlarm Security Suite. We have had no power outages that could explain the behavior. I do not have a recording voltmeter to monitor the line voltages, but none of our numerous clocks show any power disruptions -- and as I said the machines are on very good UPS backup.
The bottom line -- if there is one -- is that both machines are behaving as though a programmed shutdown is occurring. I can find no settings anywhere in Windows XP that could account for this and as I have said the machines have only an OS in common once the Blaze sofware was removed. I am typing this at 3:00 AM since the machine I had left on at a little after midnight was shutdown when I came down just now to check it. This same machine had run from 7:00 AM yesterday morning when I turned it back on to midnight with no problems so the mysterious shutdowns don't appear to be correlated with how long the machine has been on. Neither machine has ever shown any sign of overheating. SpeedFan will show between 38 and 41 degress for the CPU all day. The lab temperature is a steady 26.
I have run SuperAntiSpyware, Trojan Remover, Malwarebytes antimalware, Sophos rootkit software etc. without finding any malware on either machine. AV scans of the complete system shows nothing either.
In desperation, I am asking if any of you have any idea of what could be the problem.
Note added:
Both computers appear to have no other problems -- other than the apparent programmed shutdown. I have used both of them extensively during the time they exhibited this anomolous behavior and have not encountered any other failure or out of the ordinary behavior.
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