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General discussion (archive)Does anybody know what might cause this?(29 posts)(29 posts)
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Posted June 09, 2011
Last night, after about 2 hours of playing Neverwinter Nights, my PC just powered off. The peripherals were still on, the lights in the house were on, but it just powered off. I've had many PCs and have experienced many glitches over the years, but this is the first time this has ever happened. Does anyone know what might cause this? I powered back up and played for another 1/2 hour without any incident. It WAS a hot night, but relatively comfortable in the room with the PC. The machine did not feel overly hot, there were no strange noises coming out of it. It IS, however, a 32-bit Vista operating system and prone to f***ing up oddly at times for no reason.
Posted June 09, 2011
Grrrrrr... Vista doesn't have anything to do with this. Don't troll just for the sake of trolling.

It is a hardware problem... Overheat, bad PSU, bad RAM. Check these.
Posted June 09, 2011
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KavazovAngel: Grrrrrr... Vista doesn't have anything to do with this. Don't troll just for the sake of trolling.

It is a hardware problem... Overheat, bad PSU, bad RAM. Check these.
I didn't mean to troll, but the operating system HAS caused failure on startup for no reason several times, so I thought it might be useful information. Sorry to have unintentionally offended you.

Bad RAM or PSU? Does this cause power-down?
Posted June 09, 2011
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KavazovAngel: Grrrrrr... Vista doesn't have anything to do with this. Don't troll just for the sake of trolling.

It is a hardware problem... Overheat, bad PSU, bad RAM. Check these.
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SaraB123: I didn't mean to troll, but the operating system HAS caused failure on startup for no reason several times, so I thought it might be useful information. Sorry to have unintentionally offended you.

Bad RAM or PSU? Does this cause power-down?
A bad PSU probably. Do you have another, similar PSU to check if this behavior is not caused by any other components?
This is what I would do at work: Unplug everything not necessary from the computer and the PSU and start testing.
Post edited June 09, 2011 by ThermioN
Posted June 09, 2011
My moneys on the gpu...
Posted June 09, 2011
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SaraB123: I didn't mean to troll, but the operating system HAS caused failure on startup for no reason several times, so I thought it might be useful information. Sorry to have unintentionally offended you.

Bad RAM or PSU? Does this cause power-down?
You didn't offend me... but kind of getting bored of all the Vista complains when 99% of the times, its a hardware problem. :)

Startup failure... Windows startup failure or computer startup failure?

Anyway, try another PSU. If the problem is still there, use Memtest86+ to test the RAM.

If again the problem is still there and the RAM is confirmed as good, its either the CPU overheating or the motherboard failing.

Check whether the motherboard's chipset is still properly intact.
Post edited June 09, 2011 by KavazovAngel
Posted June 09, 2011
GPUs overheats tend to lock up the system rather than power it off and ram tends to bluescreen (and restart if the auto restart is turned on). The power supply or CPU are the ones that tend to shut down the system in case of overheat or fault.

I'd suggest having a little play with the CPU heatsink and see if it moves much, that would mean a bad seal and excess heat not being vented away properly. If its on tight then my money is on the power supply

If you have any monitoring software, try playing NWN for as long as you can, tabbing out to the desktop every 20 minutes or so to check the CPU temperature

Thats something that noone has asked, was this a system you made yourself or a pre-built one? Do you know what manufacturer made your power supply? If its an unbranded one then I'd bet an internal organ or 2 that thats the cause there.
Post edited June 09, 2011 by Aliasalpha
Posted June 09, 2011
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Aliasalpha: I'd suggest having a little play with the CPU heatsink and see if it moves much, that would mean a bad seal and excess heat not being vented away properly.
Currently have a similar problem on my older PC. If the case gets moved even a little, the PC powers off. The chipset of the motherboard is barely alive and holding its place, I had to glue it.
Posted June 09, 2011
Like many other people have said:
1. The computer will be forced to turn off if the CPU temperature is above some limit (+-100C) - try to use HWmonitor
2. The PSU might be damaged - Try another one.
3. Your RAM (some cells) might be bad - run memtest / try some other RAM.
4. Motherboard is failing, you can almost be certain that this is the case if the above is not the problem.

I have never seen a software product being able to force shut down a computer :p so I really doubt it's that.
Posted June 09, 2011
Okay, after looking up GPU and PSU to be sure I know what you're all referring to (I admit I'm not a hardware geek) I would logically lean towards the PSU solution. I have had glitches with the GPU before, but what happened was that after several hours (maybe 7) of playing Dragon Age Origins, the graphics got blocky. This is an older game, not to say that my particular graphics card might not have a hard time with some odd calculation, but to shut down the power? Would it do that?

I'm not sure I know a way of testing the PSU. If it happens again I'll try replacing it I guess. I appreciate the help - I really wasn't sure what it could be. And I have replaced a power supply before, when upgrading my graphics card on another PC, so the idea doesn't scare me.
Posted June 09, 2011
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SaraB123: I'm not sure I know a way of testing the PSU. If it happens again I'll try replacing it I guess. I appreciate the help - I really wasn't sure what it could be. And I have replaced a power supply before, when upgrading my graphics card on another PC, so the idea doesn't scare me.
You have to spend quite a bit money to get a quality PSU. Most cheap-ass PSUs barely last a year. I was changing PSUs on my old PC like every 5-6 months (yea, paying $20-25 for it speaks for itself). :)
Posted June 09, 2011
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SaraB123: Okay, after looking up GPU and PSU to be sure I know what you're all referring to (I admit I'm not a hardware geek) I would logically lean towards the PSU solution. I have had glitches with the GPU before, but what happened was that after several hours (maybe 7) of playing Dragon Age Origins, the graphics got blocky. This is an older game, not to say that my particular graphics card might not have a hard time with some odd calculation, but to shut down the power? Would it do that?
If your GPU is failing/crashing you should experience some sort of error procedure before shut down (like a blue screen or something).

(a PSU tester would cost you some money, easier to just switch or borrow)
Posted June 09, 2011
Like everyone, the power supply unit.
It happened to me once. How old was your computer?
Posted June 09, 2011
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Aliasalpha: GPUs overheats tend to lock up the system rather than power it off and ram tends to bluescreen (and restart if the auto restart is turned on). The power supply or CPU are the ones that tend to shut down the system in case of overheat or fault.

I'd suggest having a little play with the CPU heatsink and see if it moves much, that would mean a bad seal and excess heat not being vented away properly. If its on tight then my money is on the power supply

If you have any monitoring software, try playing NWN for as long as you can, tabbing out to the desktop every 20 minutes or so to check the CPU temperature

Thats something that noone has asked, was this a system you made yourself or a pre-built one? Do you know what manufacturer made your power supply? If its an unbranded one then I'd bet an internal organ or 2 that thats the cause there.
Aliasalpha, thanks for that info. One question: how does one play with the CPU heatsink? Or maybe the question should be: what and where is the CPU heatsink?

I don't know who made the power supply and am at work right now (things are sloooow here) so I can't check, but it's a pre-packaged Dell machine about 3 years old.

The overheating is a possibility, although I had only been playing for 2 hours and the machine did not feel hot at all. This is probably ANOTHER dumb question, but could this be caused by, say, a dusty machine? Could excessive cat hair cause these problems... because I have inherited a cat that likes to sit next to me while I play. Maybe I should try cleaning the thing out first... *waiting to be slapped upside the head*
Posted June 09, 2011
Since this is the first time it's ever happened, I wouldn't jump to any conclusions. Unless you have a power conditioner/UPS/battery backup, a sudden power down could be caused by a brief power anomaly.

If it happens again, it is probably a hardware problem. CPU overheating IS a possibility, though. If you are comfortable popping the case open, make sure the CPU fan is still functional and not clogged with dust. If it is, your whole case is probably dusty. Try cleaning it with canned air.

If the case is clean and it still happens, the likely culprits are the power supply or the mainboard. Especially if this machine is older - PSU's seem to have about a 3-4 year life span in my experience.
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General discussion (archive)Does anybody know what might cause this?(29 posts)(29 posts)
(29 posts)