Random unexpected reboots after Win10 upgrade

[watercooled]

Since upgrading to Windows 10 my gaming system has randomly rebooted itself a few times. I've no idea what's causing it as there's nothing helpful in event viewer, no memory dumps and just a 'windows was shut down unexpectedly' message in Reliability monitor.

Having looked online it looks like the same general problem is happening to other people but I can't seem to find any relevant solutions to try.

It is on a 7>10 upgraded system rather than a clean install so I guess that's one thing to try, although I'd rather avoid it if possible. Also so far it's only happened when I've walked away and left the system idle, not during heavy load/games so it doesn't seem like it would be a power supply problem. I caught it happening as I walked back in just now - screen went black, relay in sound card clicked off (it's perfectly normal for the relay to click when powering on/off the system BTW) and then I saw the POST screen.

I'm just a bit on edge using the system now as I'm wondering when it will reset again.

Cheers!

[Phage]

I've had that with a corrupted BIOS. A reflash cured it.
My Gigabyte board is famous for it

[watercooled]

Thanks I'll give it a go.

Just seems strange though - I don't recall it ever happening on 7 but as soon as I moved to 10 it's happened multiple times.

I also had a weird problem where one of my SSDs dropped read speed a fair bit and TRIM wasn't working properly. A reboot didn't help but a complete power cycle seemed to cure it, so maybe it was just a coincidental SSD controller firmware bug.

[Phage]

Not sure about OS effects. I've had a few lock ups recently but no reboots.
I have everything OCd so that's more Likely the issue.

[Zak33]

Control Panel\System and Security\Security and Maintenance\Reliability Monitor


to find it fast :
click the windows icon bottom left and just type (not in a box.. just start typing) the word RELIABILITY and let Windows 10 show you where it's hidden

then look at the chart

see what's goin' down.. it's complex but you might find the reason

[watercooled]

I did have a look in reliability monitor (see first post) and WRT the error itself it doesn't seem to say anything useful TBH, just 'Windows was not properly shut down' and under description 'The previous system shutdown at 5:02:11 PM on ‎4/‎15/‎2016 was unexpected.'

You don't say!

However there are a couple more events from recently relating to svchost, and the fault module being ESENT.dll, so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. It's 'stopped working' five times today, once yesterday but not around the previous crash. They only seem to have been happening (apart from the first one which gave a memory dump, so again maybe they're unrelated) since the installation of KB3147458. I'd try uninstalling it but of course MS in their infinite wisdom no longer allow such treachery! I could try uninstalling and letting it reinstall I guess. Interestingly, that error is also appearing on another PC. Looks like MS might have fouled something up there! Anyone else seeing that?

Edit: Sorry I re-typed my post and forgot to include the part about the memory dump! Basically, I did get a memory dump just once, the very first time it happened. Whocrashed gave the following analysis:

Crash dump directory: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump

Crash dumps are enabled on your computer.

On Sat 02/04/2016 20:02:06 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: ntkrnlmp.exe (nt!KeBugCheckEx+0x0)
Bugcheck code: 0x3B (0xC0000005, 0xFFFFF801355A8B10, 0xFFFFD00021A9AA60, 0x0)
Error: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION
Bug check description: This indicates that an exception happened while executing a routine that transitions from non-privileged code to privileged code.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in the Windows kernel. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver that cannot be identified at this time.

But that's the one and only time it's given me a memory dump so I'm not sure if it's related or not.

[malfunction]

I had the same issue to a large degree in the early days of Windows 10 though it seems to have calmed down now and only happened on one of my two systems running 10 (both similar spec). I could stress test without being at the PC or actively use the PC for work or games and it was perfectly stable but if I left it idle it would often reset. In my case I got a few memory dumps that pointed to my network and sound card drivers and I switched my network card out (on board killer NIC --> discrete Intel NIC) which reduced the number of crashes I saw and at one point Windows 10 threw some new (Creative) sound card drivers at me and it's basically stable now though I still get the odd (once a month or so) crash with no real explanation.

[watercooled]

Yeah I've manually updated my Asus DS sound card drivers as I noticed the version Windows installed were far from current, see if that helps. I've also updated my BIOS as per Phage's suggestion. It's very intermittent though so it's just a case of waiting now.

Thanks

[watercooled]

Ughhh, it's just happened again, right in the middle of playing a game this time.

Again, in reliability monitor it just shows as 'Windows was not properly shut down' and no crash dumps. It's almost as though it's hardware related, but it didn't happen once in Win7 and it seems far too coincidental that it's only happened on Win10 after years of good reliability on 7.

However...

I've just looked in event viewer and immediately before the reboot it looks like svchost (or something it's hosting) has crashed yet again, and it linked me to a Report.wer file which amongst other things mentions ESENT.dll. I wonder if anyone knows what I should actually be looking for in there?

[watercooled]

Well I've just started reformatting, see if that helps at all. I wanted to do it anyway to move from BIOS to UEFI boot amongst other things so now's as good a time as any I guess!

Still, if anyone wants to have a look at the Report.wer I have it would be much appreciated.

[watercooled]

Oh well that's worrying - it's still happening after the reformat.

I'm really not sure what's going on then - perhaps the power supply? Thankfully I do have a spare so I might swap it out to try. I just really don't understand why it's only just started happening after installing Win10 - that's a heck of a coincidence after the hardware has been stable for over 5 years!

Edit: The only thing is, is seems more like a 'soft' reboot i.e. fans etc stay powered up from what I can tell - I would have thought a PSU failure would have more likely caused the lot to switch off.

[Phage]

Heat ? After that it might be time to start the process of elmination by taking it back to basics and seeing it it works with nio GPU, one stick of RAM etc...

[watercooled]

Yeah, not what I was hoping for really. I guess it could be a random hardware problem, just its occurrence right after the Win10 upgrade is bugging me. I might try removing the newest two RAM sticks, swap the PSU and take out the PCI sound card, see if anything changes.

Trouble is it's one of those annoyingly intermittent problems so it's hard to know if it's resolved or not.

Edit: Sorry I forgot to say, heat seems fine, and it doesn't seem to matter whether the system is completely idle or in-game.

I've just had MS support remote-access my system and he seemed about as stumped as I am.

Way to waste my weekend!

[watercooled]

After a suggestion from a friend I rebooted, had no open programs and left my PC on all last night and all today while I've been in work, and it's still on with no reboots.

So it would seem it's either been resolved with me playing about with the RAM, or some software is causing it. Software wise I think the only things I've likely had open acorss every crash include Chrome and possibly HWmonitor and Steam.

However, I've just remembered a version of CPUID used to cause an old Toshiba laptop of mine (Northwood Celeron) to crash in a similar fashion, but it was instantly rather than randomly if I remember correctly. At the time I contacted the developer and he did manage to resolve it as it didn't happen with SMBUS=0 set in the ini file.

I'm far from certain that's the cause as it never happened on Windows 7, it's just another possibility.