Inexplicable Reboot: no logs anywhere

Thornstromb · 18 Jul 2020

-- Windows version 1909 (OS Build 18363.959)

SO. yeah. as the title says, my win10 is arbitrarily rebooting, this has happened multiple times. There are NO crash logs anywhere, neither Event Viewer nor Reliability Monitor find anything, even after activating higher levels of logging via various measures found online. The restart is instantaneous, going straight from fully operational to boot screen without any error screen whatsoever. no suspicious application crashes are logged, no hardware alerts are logged either.

Id initially suspect my PSU, but said PSU is relatively new (about 2 years), and not only does room heat have no observable impact on the crash ratio, but the rebooting only seems to happen within the first 10 minutes or so from boot time: if my computer makes it past that window without rebooting then it does not have any risk of doing it until next reboot attempt. This un-suggests power failure issues, which generally become *more* likely to trigger the longer the PC is left running.

It could be a virus, but the intermittent nature of the problem and the general reliability of avast combined with multiple extant firewalls seems to make that unlikely. As an aside, occasionally this issue occurs two times in a row. no idea why.

yeah, its a 10 year old PC, but i don't have the monetary wherewithal to do a full replace unless its absolutely necessary. The model number of my system in profile is basically exactly what i am running save for the replacement PSU, which was needed to add the graphics card.
Hopefully someone has an idea for how to track down the issue?

Caledon Ken · 18 Jul 2020

Hi Thornstromb. Welcome to TenForums @Thornstromb

Can you recall when this started? What changes were being made around this time.

First thing I would do is disable automatic restart.

Right click Start > Run > type sysdm.cpl > Enter > Advance Tab > Startup and Recovery box > Settings > remove check mark from "Automatically Restart". While you are there make sure it is set to write dump.

How much free space do you have on boot disk?

Think I would also reseat connectors and cards, that is remove and re-install to ensure connections are sound. (Including memory. On the subject of memory are yours installed in slots as per manual. If you have four memory slots and two sticks most MB's want memory in specific slots)

Have you run any test with just one stick of memory in correct slot. Then two. ( I assume you three sticks to get 12GB, maybe my assumption is incorrect)

Have you run a memory tester? If not please do so.

MemTest86+ - Test RAM

Is your BIOS up to date? Not saying to update, asking is it the most recent.

You don't mention much about storage. If you disconnect all but boot disk do you have an issue. (Don't do this if you are running raid or Windows Storage Spaces as I don't want to see your arrays broken.)

Ken

Berton · 18 Jul 2020

Also, some older computers had problems with leaking and bulging capacitors [put in a Search of the Internet] on the motherboard and/or in the power supply, caused unexplained problems. It was a manufacturing problem with company/s making the capacitors and no 'brand' was totally immune, I lost a Custom WinXP computer for that problem [good time to build a new one].

SJMaye · 19 Jul 2020

Not sure it is related, but I have a computer I don't use much. I pulled it out today to install the latest updates. All was going OK until the very end when it was trying to install the latest feature update (I am pretty sure). After that it began endlessly rebooting. During the reboot there would be a blink of the type of blue screen you get during boot when updating the system, however, in this case it was just a blink and went on to my desktop. It would be about 30 seconds then reboot again.

I tried to uninstall the last update which it said was unsuccessful. With that said it is not rebooting anymore and the last update is back in the queue. I postponed updates until I can figure it out.