Spontaneous shutdowns and restarts

[Traxan]

Hi gang. Last week I upgraded my home built PC from a Lynnfield to a Sandy Bridge motherboard and CPU. I kept everything else: the heatsink, the 1333 memory, etc. It went off without a hitch, but in the past week, I have had two instances where the PC just shut down completely. Off. Everything in one shot, like it had powered down. THen, about 3-4 seconds later, it powers right back up and restarts.

So, somewhere along the line is a power problem. What should I be looking for either in BIOS or in SpeedFan?

EDIT: Forgot to include the board. It's a Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3. CPU is a Core i5-2600. Memory is Corsair PC1333 memory. Video is a Radeon 5870.

TIA.

 

[Puppies04]

Probably doesn't matter but there is no such think as an I5 2600....

Have you tried it with another PSU?

Have you checked ALL conections on the MOBO?

Have you overclocked at all?

Is the wall socket faulty?

Is the mobo earthing onto the case, i.e are all standoffs properly installed?

What temps is the cpu running at, have you checked them?

What bios version are you running on?

Tired can't think of anything else right now

 

[Traxan]

Probably doesn't matter but there is no such think as an I5 2600....

Have you tried it with another PSU?

No I don't have one to spare but this never happened before with the P55 motherboard.

Have you checked ALL conections on the MOBO?

Yes.

Have you overclocked at all?

No. 3.4Ghz is more than enough.

Is the wall socket faulty?

No. Again, this never happened before.

Is the mobo earthing onto the case, i.e are all standoffs properly installed?

Yes.

What temps is the cpu running at, have you checked them?

35C according to SpeedFan, 36C on the GPU. And I'm running 3 instances of EverQuest at the moment.

What bios version are you running on?

Latest.

Tired can't think of anything else right now

No worries.

 

[denis280]

I would say overheating.But 35C is ok. is all rams sitting in properly.

 

[Brainonska511]

Have you tried clearing the CMOS? Anything in the Windows Event Viewer?

 

[Traxan]

I found this in the Event Viewer:

The previous system shutdown at 2:58:39 PM on ‎12/‎22/‎2011 was unexpected.

Another said:

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

But they don't say what caused it.

 

[zCypher]

Run a memtest to test your ram
Do you have any spare components so you can test the ones you have by replacing them?
Remove all the components so you have the bare minimum installed with only one stick of ram, does issue still happen?

 

[Brainonska511]

I found this in the Event Viewer:

The previous system shutdown at 2:58:39 PM on ‎12/‎22/‎2011 was unexpected.

Another said:

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

But they don't say what caused it.

No other events paired with that? When I was having problems on another system due to some Windows issue, there would be a secondary event right above or below (usually something like "Kernel Power") with what may have caused it.

Edit:
If there are no other events paired with it, I'd probably start looking at hardware.

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

i would say powersupply.

what do you currently have in your system?

easy test. download prime 95 and let it run for a bit

 

[Traxan]

Ok I'll do Memtest and Prime 95. Will report back. Thanks guys

 

[daveybrat]

Definitely run Memtest. I've had several Gigabyte motherboards that did not play nicely with Corsair memory.

 

[Traxan]

Memtest came up clean. And I've been running BOINC for Einstein@Home. Kinda funny seeing all 8 cores in my Rainmeter monitors go to 100%

Today I had another incident. The computer froze solid. All of the Rainmeter meters were frozen. But when I hit the reset button, the computer powered down. Huh. I hit the power switch and it would not start. Hitting reset again, however, DID restart it.

So I opened it up and saw the reset wire was on the F_PANEL backwards. So I reversed it and hopefully that will be the end of it.

 

[Matt1970]

I found this in the Event Viewer:

The previous system shutdown at 2:58:39 PM on ‎12/‎22/‎2011 was unexpected.

Another said:

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

But they don't say what caused it.

Giving those were your only real errors related to the prolem and the fact that it just comepletely shuts off, I would point to PWR SUP first. Very high probability of hardware failure.

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

So I opened it up and saw the reset wire was on the F_PANEL backwards. So I reversed it and hopefully that will be the end of it.

doubtfull... +/- only affects the lights, not the switches

 

[VirtualLarry]

doubtfull... +/- only affects the lights, not the switches

On some cases, particularly Antec cases, the polarity of the switches DO matter, because they ground the front-panel through those switch pins.

 

[Traxan]

On some cases, particularly Antec cases, the polarity of the switches DO matter, because they ground the front-panel through those switch pins.

Well my case is Cooler Master but it didn't matter. I woke up to another frozen PC.

Guess I should take the mobo back for a new one just to be safe.

 

[Traxan]

Giving those were your only real errors related to the prolem and the fact that it just comepletely shuts off, I would point to PWR SUP first. Very high probability of hardware failure.

Except the problem never existed before I did the upgrade from P55 to Z68. They all started when this new mobo and CPU were introduced.

 

[Traxan]

Well it did it again on my system after I put the P55 back in. So I guess it is an unstable PSU.

 

[vonwerder]

Sometimes the hal.dll file will cause the computer to act like a flaky power supply.

If you did partial hardware changes there's a good chance the Hardware Abstraction Layer dll is now incorrect. The stop error you get should let you know if that's the case.

Sometimes you can "repair" the windows installation and correct HAL.dll and other times you just have to reinstall Windows.

 

[fastamdman]

Whenever changing out hardware, especially with new motherboards and processors, aka fresh builds, it's always a good idea to re-install windows. Simply back up your files and then reinstall.

Also, go into your bios and "load fail safe defaults" or "Optimized defaults".

If you are still having the issue, download cpuid hardware monitor. Put a load on all the cores and watch your 3.3v, 5v and 12volt rails. If anything is dipping down to low that could be the issue.

What video card and power supply do you have?

 

[Traxan]

Well I swapped out the PSU, motherboard and CPU and it STILL happened.

New PSU is a Corsair 800 watt GS800. Mobo is the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 and a Core i7-2600k. Here's what CPUID got while I ran a stress test with Prime95:

Hardware monitor ITE IT8728
Voltage 0 1.04 Volts [0x57] (CPU VCORE)
Voltage 1 2.04 Volts [0xAA] (VIN1)
Voltage 2 2.96 Volts [0xF7] (+3.3V)
Voltage 3 4.94 Volts [0xF5] (+5V)
Voltage 4 2.78 Volts [0x3A] (+12V)
Voltage 5 -4.70 Volts [0x62] (-12V)
Voltage 6 -6.00 Volts [0x7D] (-5V)
Voltage 7 2.82 Volts [0x8C] (+5V VCCH)
Voltage 8 1.55 Volts [0x81] (VBAT)
Temperature 0 34°C (93°F) [0x22] (TMPIN0)
Temperature 1 25°C (77°F) [0x19] (TMPIN1)
Temperature 2 32°C (89°F) [0x20] (TMPIN2)
Fan 0 22 RPM [0x1DE] (FANIN0)
Fan 1 1007 RPM [0x29E] (FANIN1)
Fan PWM 0 0 pc [0x0] (FANPWM0)
Fan PWM 1 0 pc [0x0] (FANPWM1)
Fan PWM 2 0 pc [0x0] (FANPWM2)
Register space LPC, base address = 0x0290

Unless there is a hint in here, it looks like I will have to do something I don't want to do, and that's a reinstall. It's such a PITA between installs and validations/registrations of apps.

 

[Traxan]

Well, I don't know what else is left. The case? Woke up to another frozen PC and the reset buttons didn't work at first. Could a case cause this much trouble or do I have to bite the bullet and reinstall Windows? A new case would be easier...

 

[Brainonska511]

When you put the new board/PSU in, did you stick with the integrated graphics

 

[Traxan]

It was the graphics card.

The fucking graphics card.

I had replaced the case due to all the weird shutdowns and lockups and reinstalled Windows. Or tried to. Then the lightbulb went on. I pulled out the Radeon 5870 out and put in the old 5770. The computer has been rock solid steady since. This will be the second time I RMA this card. It's a Gigabyte card, too. normally they make good stuff but this card is a lemon.

I am so mad right now... But I appreciate everyone's attempts to help me.