Heart attack due to my laptop!

[Deleted member 94250]

Hi guys.
forgive the buzzfeed title XD
So the weirdest thing happened.
While I was gaming my laptop suddenly blacked out and restarted from boot.
no BSOD, no error, just decided to restart.
Now, it has an m.2 and sufficient RAM+i7 9750h so it booted within 7 seconds and I was back to gaming within 20 more.
but what the $"%@ing hell was that!?!?!
It has only happened once, but I've poured more than 7 years of savings into my laptop and, well... I don't want trouble :/
edit: it's an optimus X

 

[ubuysa]

Windows is configured by default to automatically restart if a 'system failure' is detected, that's most likely what you saw. Open the Event Viewer and expand the Critical and Error sections and look for entries just before the time when it restarted. You can ignore any error 41 Kernel Power entries, they just record that Windows didn't shutdown properly.

If there's nothing obvious in Event Viewer then the most likely cause of a 'system failure' will be a driver error, and since it happened whilst gaming the graphics driver is the most likely suspect. See whether there is an updated driver for your graphics card and also for the integrated GPU too.

 

[Deleted member 94250]

Windows is configured by default to automatically restart if a 'system failure' is detected, that's most likely what you saw. Open the Event Viewer and expand the Critical and Error sections and look for entries just before the time when it restarted. You can ignore any error 41 Kernel Power entries, they just record that Windows didn't shutdown properly.

If there's nothing obvious in Event Viewer then the most likely cause of a 'system failure' will be a driver error, and since it happened whilst gaming the graphics driver is the most likely suspect. See whether there is an updated driver for your graphics card and also for the integrated GPU too.

arigato. it says the following:-

just to let you know. IT WAS PUGGED IN AND BATTERY FULL. if it was unexpected powerloss that's not cos of me not supplying electrons

 

[Deleted member 94250]

2,300+ errors/warnings in 2 months? is that normal?

 

[SpyderTracks]

Just to verify, the error regarding event 41, just points to the system rebooting. It's not a cause of anything.

If you panic, it's very likely you'll overreact and possibly cause further issues, so just relax and take it methodically.

There shouldn't be so many errors in event viewer, but as @Nursemorph says, the important ones are the ones immediately before the restart, they should pinpoint the reason why it rebooted.

9 times out of 10, symptoms like this are windows related and easy to resolve.

There was also an emergency patch rolled out for windows which on my laptop rebooted the system automatically without me being present, that was rolled out a couple of days ago.

 

[ubuysa]

I have over 39,000 Administrative events logged on my system and another 31,000 Security events logged too. Event logging is cumulative, so it all depends on how long since you last emptied the log files or reinstalled Windows, 2321 events is nothing. If you click on the 'Windows Logs' folder just below where you are you'll see the total number of events of each type.

The majority of these events are either just informational or warning messages and of very little significance at all and 99.9999999% of the error messages are trivial and of no importance. The fake "I'm from Microsoft and we've detected your PC has a problem" scammers usually direct you to the Event Viewer and ask how many errors you see, when you say several thousand they exclaim "See! We told you you were infected...".

As mentioned (and as I said in my original post, that Kernel Power Event 41 is NOT a problem. The text of the message tells you this, it says The system has rebooted without shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly and that's all that message tells you.

You need to know the time (and date) your system rebooted itself and I'll show you how to quickly display log entries for that date and between two times that include the reboot time using PowerShell - it's easier to use than the Event Viewer for things like this.

Open PowerShell in Administrative mode (so you can access all the logs) and maximise it so it fills the screen (so we see all output). Enter the following simple commands one after another, pressing the enter key after each one...

PS C:\Windows\System32> $start = get-date -date 13/3/20 -hour 10 (where the value for -date is the day you're interested in and the value for -hour is the hour in which it rebooted; so if it rebooted at 10:46 then specify 10 here)

PS C:\Windows\System32> $end = get-date -date 13/3/20 -hour 11 (where the value for -date is the day you're interested in and the value for -hour is the hour afterwhich it rebooted; so if it rebooted at 10:46 then specify 11 here)

PS C:\Windows\System32> get-eventlog application -after $start -before $end -entrytype error (this will display all error log entries from the application log between the dates and times in those two variables). Post a screenshot of this output).

PS C:\Windows\System32> get-eventlog system -after $start -before $end -entrytype error (this will display all error log entries from the system log between the dates and times in those two variables). Post a screenshot of this output).

We'll be able to see all important error log entries written during the hour that it rebooted, this may help identify a reason.

 

[Deleted member 94250]

Hmmm...I was going to say that 2300 events is not normal.......until I checked my event viewer (bear in mind my desktop system works flawlessly) and found nearly 7,000 since I bought the system 2 months ago! Now I'm not so sure on what is normal, though there do seem to be a lot of errors rather than just warnings.

As Ubuysa pointed out, the "Event 41, Kernel Power" entries just point out that the system didn't shut down properly for some reason....what is most important is what your computer was doing immediately before the shutdown occured, specifically the event entries. I would go back to that Kernel entry and look at the entries immediately preceding that....in normal circumstances there should be an entry that points to the issue.

Have you updated your graphics drivers as suggested by Ubuysa? Unexpected shutdowns are frequently caused by out-of-date drivers on anything from CPUs and GPUs to simple things like Wi-Fi cards.

Thanks for your reply.

I don't know how to update Intel drivers, same for Wi-Fi cards. for movies I used GeForce experience... I'll go through the event lot one more time and look for just before the shur down.

 

[ubuysa]

Thanks for your reply.

I don't know how to update Intel drivers, same for Wi-Fi cards. for movies I used GeForce experience... I'll go through the event lot one more time and look for just before the shur down.

If you run the Power Shell commands I suggested any potential errors will be obvious.

 

[Deleted member 94250]

If you run the Power Shell commands I suggested any potential errors will be obvious.

Okay. Will do

 

[Deleted member 94250]

Hello people, this problem has re-appeared and after doing @ubuysa 's advice, i got this:-

Event viewer has this:-

what happened? I only know that a kernel is part of windows 10, and that power to the laptop cut mid-game and pretty much crashed.
I've never overclocked/ undervolted/... as I get good enough thermals and performance when gaming.
what heppened?

(the first time it happened i tried to do what ubuysa advised, but got a weird red text error message. in powershell. I gave up and didn't follow as the problem didnt repeat. BUT THEN IT DID. if yall know whats going on please help

 

[ubuysa]

First off, stop worrying there's nothing seriously wrong.

Second off the Event ID 41 Kernel Power entry you are most worried about is harmless. It just tells you that Windows wans't shut down properly, that's all. It's got nothing to do with your power supply.

It would help if we could see the full text of those ESENT errors though. Could you issue all the commands again for the same date and times but modify the last one to look like this....

PS C:\Windows\System32> Get-EventLog Application -After $start -Before $end -EntryType error | Select-Object -Property Index, EntryType, TimeWritten, InstanceId, Message

The second part of this command (it's actually two command piped together with the pipe character (|) and not an upper case i) will format the output slightly differently so we can see the full text.

ESENT (Extensible Storage Engine) is a database that's used by several components of Windows (including File Explorer and Search). ESENT error 455 generally occurs because a database folder that ESENT was trying to access doesn't exist. The extended (piped) commands above will display the full text of the error message and identify the folder that's missing. I'll then show you how to create that folder. This was a common problem with Windows version 1903.

All that said, these ESENT errors should not have caused your system to restart they way you're describing, so a couple more questions...

1. What version of Windows 10 are you running? Open the Run box and enter the command winver to see.

2. Have you upgraded to this version of Windows 10 from an earlier version (say from 1809 to 1903 for example)?