# Windows 7 restarts randomly



## Abaminog (Dec 9, 2009)

The problem is in the subject. I have Win 7 Ultimate running on Intel Core i7 with 8G RAM and other bells and whistles. I bought this computer about a year ago, and the problem with the random restarting kicked in within a month of buying. The PC just switched off randomly without any warning and reboots. I doubt it's related to overheating as RealTemp hardly ever shows above 50-55 C for any of the processors. When this problem first appeared, my friend IT specialist recommended to run a thorough malware check as he had come across with a virus before that did just that. And indeed, I managed to catch and destroy one of those with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Then the problem went away for nearly a yer and quite recently it has re-appeared again. I have re-run the Anti-Malware but it couldn't find anything suspicious. The temperature is still hardly the reason. The PC reboots few times a day at very random times. And it's getting more and more frequent.

Can anyone advise on what this could be? I would greatly appreciate. By the way, as anti-virus I am using Kaspersky with regular automatic updates.


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## TerryNet (Mar 23, 2005)

Sounds to me like the power supply going bad. But memory and hard drive problems are also possibilities.


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## Abaminog (Dec 9, 2009)

TerryNet said:


> Sounds to me like the power supply going bad. But memory and hard drive problems are also possibilities.


Is there a way of telling which problem it is? If I take the PC to the repairs, they'll gladly replace all the insides just to keep the costs up.


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## Megabite (Apr 5, 2008)

What are you doing when it re boots...running games or videos?


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## Abaminog (Dec 9, 2009)

Megabite said:


> What are you doing when it re boots...running games or videos?


I don't run games on this computer and only occasionally videos. It reboots at random points, e.g. when I am simply browsing internet or using MS Word.


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## Megabite (Apr 5, 2008)

Those temps 50-55 is that Celsius and it that your CPU?

Download and install hwmonitor 
and see what the temps etc are....take a reading CPU(core) and GPU Video card and post them.

post the results


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## Abaminog (Dec 9, 2009)

HWMonitor results attached.


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## TerryNet (Mar 23, 2005)

Control Panel - System - Advanced System Settings - Advanced tab - Startup and Recovery Settings... - Unselect 'Automatically restart.' If the system turns off it's probably the power supply or maybe temp. If it doesn't turn off you should get a message, which may be enlightening.

It's good to run a disk check occasionally even if you are not experiencing problems.

Memtest86+ is one popular memory tester.

I'm not suggesting that my ideas are better or even as good as *Megabite*'s; just giving some additional info.


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## Abaminog (Dec 9, 2009)

Nothing is helping... My PC keeps rebooting as it feels like. Of course, I can take it to repairs. But my concern is that they won't know what exactly is wrong and, to be on a safe side, would recommend to replace all 'usual suspects', incl. RAM and hard-drive, which is gonna cost me a small fortune. 

By the way, the memory test recommended in a previous post didn't show anything wrong.

So, I am now being even more puzzled...


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## RaytheBear (Sep 14, 2010)

Hi, 
If you have in fact followed every single step given to you by the members above, maybe checking to see if All your Drivers are up to date and up to Win7 Standards.
Make sure that your MS Patches are up to date
If you are afraid that a PC Repair shop will take you for ride, maybe your IT friend can take a look at it for you for maybe just the price of a 24.
Your It friend can open your machine and check all the wires to make sure they tight, check the Video card and RAM chip(s),CPU to make sure they are properly seated, check your Fans to make sure that they are running properly. While the computer is open, he can use a can of air to blow out all the dust, etc.
Side Note: Maybe your It friend will suggest that you do a backup, reformat your PC and do a Fresh re-install.

Good luck
Ray


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## Abaminog (Dec 9, 2009)

I have unscrewed and opened the PC and checked/cleaned the wires and connectors but the problem is still there. I checked the system event viewer, and it appears I have been getting quite a few disk/ntfs errors lately with the following description:

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR1

and

The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume \Device\HarddiskVolume2.

Of course, I ran the disk checker as suggested but all seems fine. The drive errors do not correlate in time with the reboots but I don't like seeing them. Not a good sign in my view...

A bit lost with this whole problem. There must be a way of figuring out which device (if it's a hardware issue) has been acting up on me. I am not a big fan of re-installing a 'clean' operating system for the sake of making sure that it's not a software matter.


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## RaytheBear (Sep 14, 2010)

Well then you should go to Plan B (seriously) as mentionned before, if your IT friend is a beer drinker a case of Two-Four would be cheaper than bringing your machine to a shop.
Have you considered doing a Repair, if you can do it from within Windows itself you should not lose much:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

This is it for me,
Again good luck finding your problem
Ray


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## jiml8 (Jul 3, 2005)

That system is running hot, but not so hot it should be causing shutdowns.

I notice that your CPU core voltage looks quite low, and this WOULD cause random shutdowns, as would low voltage on your RAM. You should try turning the CPU core voltage up by 20-30 millivolts or so and see if the problems vanish. This should be an option in your BIOS.

Edit: low core voltage would also cause corruption in your filesystem as writes wouldn't go through correctly. I would be looking there first. If turning the voltage up on the core doesn't solve the problem, I would be hanging an oscilloscope on the power supply lines to see if there was ripple or switching transients that are well out of specification (5%)


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## fodelement (Feb 14, 2009)

Hello, first I can not blame you for not wanting to bring your PC to a repair center, besides; that's why your here!

As a lot of good suggestions have been thrown around I have one for you as well. Can you navigate to

```
C:\Windows\Minidump
```
and see if there are any files in there, if there are let us know and we can tell you where to take it from there, if not we can look into another solution to your problem.


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## Abaminog (Dec 9, 2009)

jiml8 said:


> I notice that your CPU core voltage looks quite low, and this WOULD cause random shutdowns, as would low voltage on your RAM. You should try turning the CPU core voltage up by 20-30 millivolts or so and see if the problems vanish. This should be an option in your BIOS.


Thanks. I'll try that later today.


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## Abaminog (Dec 9, 2009)

fodelement said:


> C:\Windows\Minidump


Unfortunately, no file or folder with that name on my PC.


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