[Solution] - PC randomly shuts-down without warning

[Bikerdude]

As this just happened I thought I would give you guys a heads up -

 

At 23:34 my PC just spontainiously shutdown/rebooted. When i checked the event logs I found skypeupdate had just run directly before 'restartmanager' was called. F***ing c**t microsoft, rebooting a computer without notifiying the user and requestion permission is bang out of order. but then they got caught bringing down the whole skype network back in 2007 for the same f**king bollox -

 

So I have both disabled auto-update in the skype application and blocked access to the skype update server in the hosts file, wankers. If I could find another app that would use the skype protocals I would dump this POS skype client we are forced to use.

 

[update]

 

Turns out it wasnt skype, but rather something more sinister.

 

I had the same radon shurtdown isuse in Win8 and one suggestion I read about was that some of the capacitors on the motorboard were fubard, this would would result in fluctuations in the voltage/currrent being supplied to the CPU. The voltage/currentr instability would only manifest itself when the CPU would clock down, so the fix was to go into the power options and set the max power profile and the min/max cpu values being set to 100%.

 

Now I was half convinced Win8 was to blame, rather than the Cap issue as this would mean getting the mobo repaired/replaced. Now that I have downgraded to Win7 and the above fix seems to have also cured it then its looking far more likely like one or more of the Caps in the phased power supply circuite on the motherboard are dead/dieing.

 

So Gonna call Dabs toomoz and see what the processdure is as the mobo is nearly 2 years into its 3yr warranty.

[Goldwell]

https://www.trillian.im

 

Apparently that supports Skype. I used that way back in the day for AIM/MSN/Skype and from memory it worked great.

[ungoliant]

i despise auto-update for any and all software. who knows what else goes on in a background process thats on 24/7, not to mention the resource drain and the additional start-up time. I can't claim to be perfectly vigilant myself though, my SSD system partition bootup time has at least tripled over the past 1.5 years since my fresh install with brand new SSD.

[Bikerdude]

my SSD system partition bootup time has at least tripled over the past 1.5 years since my fresh install with brand new SSD.

Time to do a secure wipe and re-install me thing, like I have just done. I downgraded from Win8 to Win7 just to see what the differences area as i had been Win8 for 6 months. So far the SSD 4 w/r speeds are up, the load/shutdown times are slighly slower (I have done a number of reg tweaks to get as close to win8 as poss.) but over all the gui seems a tiny bit zipper.

[Bikerdude]

Turns out it wasnt skype, but rather something more sinister.

 

I had the same radon shurtdown isuse in Win8 and one suggestion I read about was that some of the capacitors on the motorboard were fubard, this would would result in fluctuations in the voltage/currrent being supplied to the CPU. The voltage/currentr instability would only manifest itself when the CPU would clock down, so the fix was to go into the power options and set the max power profile and the min/max cpu values being set to 100%.

 

Now I was half convinced Win8 was to blame, rather than the Cap issue as this would mean getting the mobo repaired/replaced. Now that I have downgraded to Win7 and the above fix seems to have also cured it then its looking far more likely like one or more of the Caps in the phased power supply circuite on the motherboard are dead/dieing.

 

So Gonna call Dabs toomoz and see what the processdure is as the mobo is nearly 2 years into its 3yr warranty.

[Lux]

To my knowledge a cap is either "popped" or not. You can tell by inspecting the board and looking at the tops of the capacitors. They have a little + cut in the top of them. If they are even a littled "rounded" on top (convex) then they're popped. If they're flat on top they're fine.

 

We have an electronics tech in the town where I live that has a pile of old motherboards and can desolder/replace a popped cap on a board though it costs $75 bucks for him "just to look at the board" and then $5-$15 more to replace a cap depending on the mF size of the cap. (admittedly that's a pretty arbitrary charge). It probably a similar cost in your area.

 

In any case, the only way to test the board afterward is just to see if everything functions normally and in the one case I've had to repair a board, it didn't work. YMMV.

 

You might instead just put the money towards a new board or, like you say, send it back to the mfg. and get a refurb replacement if that is indeed the culprit.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Lux