Question Win 10 rebooting problem

[IBMJunkman]

PC is ASRock P67 Professional. Intel i7-2600K CPU. 16 gig Kingston Hyperx Genesis KHX1600C9D3K2 memory (4 sticks). Kingston SV300S37A120G 120GB SSD drive. BFG Tech GeForce 7950 GT OC video card.

Has been running Win 7 Pro since I built it 10+ years ago. Owner did the free Win 10 upgrade. Machine started to reboot randomly.

I am working on it. Did some research and saw that there are no Win 10 drivers for vid card. Installed new EVGA GEFORCE GT 710 with Win 10 drivers from their site. No joy.

Did a ‘bare metal’ install of Win 10 on a new SK Hynix 500G SSD. Win 10 had drivers for the new vid card. No joy.

Swapped power supply. No joy.

Started playing with memory cards. Moved around to different slots. Ran just 2 cards. Swapped in the other 2 cards. With 2 cards used other slots. A vs B, etc. All no joy.

I have found that booting into safe made machine is solid. Never reboots. Run MSCONFIG and change to regular boot. Restart and within 10 minutes it reboots.

Am I down to motherboard? I don’t see any bulging caps. Or perhaps the CPU?

Ideas, please?

 

[VirtualLarry]

So, you've tried swapping PSUs (was the "new" PSU new?) And swapped the ancient 7950 GT for a GT 710 (a very low-powered card). Unless the new PSU was also bunk (possible, but unlikely), then you are unlikely to be having a power issue.

Brand new 500GB (SATA?) SK Hynix SSD too, and a fresh installation of Win10. Hmm.

But Safe Mode runs OK? Normally, that's due to two reasons, either a software driver that gets loaded during "normal mode", but not in "safe mode", is causing the crashes, or, your 3D card doesn't load the mfg drivers in "Safe mode" (using the VGASAVE.SYS driver instead, or something similar), and thus never fully "powers-up" into 3D clocks and higher power load. But the GT 710 is such low-power, that shouldn't matter much, unless the newly-swapped-in PSU is also well and truly bunk.

So, it seems like a software driver issue, but one in which the software driver(s) in question, are also loaded on a fresh Win10 install. Which is semi-puzzling, but the newest (20-04) version of Win10 does have some issues, with certain hardware configs. Maybe yours is one of them.

That said, what kind of peripherals (PCI-E and USB, and other), do you have plugged in? Any sort of networked devices like printers? (Edit: Also, what brand of keyboard and mouse are you using? Any USB wifi or BT dongles plugged in?)


Is there a difference in stability between "Safe Mode with Networking", and just "Safe Mode" (which disables Networking as well)? (I'm wondering if your NIC is flaky, and producing spurious interrupts.)

 

[IBMJunkman]

Original PS is Thermaltake Pure Power 500. Temp replacement is a Thermaltake TR2 RX 850 watt. Only devices are SATA SSD, SATA DVD drive, USB keyboard and mouse.

Put all 4 memory sticks back in. I just moved the GT 710 to a different PCI slot, disconnected the DVD and put the Pure Power 500 back in. Booted into Safe Mode with networking.

Will let it sit for an hour or so or until it reboots. If it is OK I will be into normal mode And see what happens.

 

[IBMJunkman]

Ran Safe Mode with networking for 2 hours. No problem. Rebooted in normal mode and got a restart within 5 minutes.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What brand/model mouse/keyboard do you use? Do they require (or automatically install) any kind of special software?

Can you post an ALT+PrntScrn of your Task Manager's "Startup Tasks" screen?

Are you loading in any 3rd-party software that may be resident, when you fresh-installed Windows 10, like MSI Afterburner. Avast or AVG A/V, etc.?

 

[IBMJunkman]

No 3rd party software running. Just what Win 10 installed.
Dynex keyboard and Logitech mouse. Both USB.

Viewed the Event Log. Last line before restart was an error. It said system restart from a bug check.

Tried to save copy of error to a thumb drive. Rebooted in middle of saving the notepad file to the USB drive.

What brand/model mouse/keyboard do you use? Do they require (or automatically install) any kind of special software?

Can you post an ALT+PrntScrn of your Task Manager's "Startup Tasks" screen?

Are you loading in any 3rd-party software that may be resident, when you fresh-installed Windows 10, like MSI Afterburner. Avast or AVG A/V, etc.?

 

[IBMJunkman]

Alt-PrintScreen does not seem to do anything.

Startup tasks are OneDrive, Skype and Spotify. All disabled. Windows Security notification is enabled.

system barely stays up long enough for me to do anything.

 

[Steltek]

Is the system set up to write kernel dumps?

If so, try installing Whocrashed and see if you can load the dump files and find out what is causing the bugcheck crash. I think it will probably run in safe mode. If it is a driver, Whocrashed will probably identify it.

It also might not hurt to pull the CPU, check it for bent pins, and then reseat it with a fresh application of thermal paste.

 

[IBMJunkman]

Will check the dump status and try the program.

I temporarily reject the bent pin possibility. . It ran Win 7 Pro for 10+ years with no problem. Box has not been opened until I got my hands on it. I don’t have any grease at the moment so the CPU removal will be the last thing I do.

Is the system set up to write kernel dumps?

If so, try installing Whocrashed and see if you can load the dump files and find out what is causing the bugcheck crash. I think it will probably run in safe mode. If it is a driver, Whocrashed will probably identify it.

It also might not hurt to pull the CPU, check it for bent pins, and then reseat it with a fresh application of thermal paste.

 

[Steltek]

Hopefully, Whocrashed will give you a lead on the specific driver and/or bugcheck code to check on.

A couple of other probably stupid questions:

1) Have you tried to reset the CMOS memory to ensure there isn't some oddball BIOS setting stuck in there that is causing a problem (probably not, but it doesn't cost much effort to check), and
2) I agree with Larry that Win10 v2004 still has some issues. Did you by chance try installing Windows 10 v1909 in lieu of v2004? If you don't have the ISO, you can get it by downloading it from a Linux web browser or by fiddling with user agent of the browser being used to do the download.
3) When you installed Windows, have you completely disabled all network access during the install, and maintained the network disconnection after the install to see if the system will still crash if Windows Update is prevented from working after install?

 

[IBMJunkman]

Will do the BIOS/UEFI reset and Whocrashed first. Will try number 3 then. No idea how to do number 2. The problem with using a back version is how do you know when it is safe to allow updates?

Hopefully, Whocrashed will give you a lead on the specific driver and/or bugcheck code to check on.

A couple of other probably stupid questions:

1) Have you tried to reset the CMOS memory to ensure there isn't some oddball BIOS setting stuck in there that is causing a problem (probably not, but it doesn't cost much effort to check), and
2) I agree with Larry that Win10 v2004 still has some issues. Did you by chance try installing Windows 10 v1909 in lieu of v2004? If you don't have the ISO, you can get it by downloading it from a Linux web browser or by fiddling with user agent of the browser being used to do the download.
3) When you installed Windows, have you completely disabled all network access during the install, and maintained the network disconnection after the install to see if the system will still crash if Windows Update is prevented from working after install?

 

[Steltek]

Will do the BIOS/UEFI reset and Whocrashed first. Will try number 3 then. No idea how to do number 2. The problem with using a back version is how do you know when it is safe to allow updates?

The main advantage of moving back one release is that it allows you to determine if it is Win10 2004 itself that is causing your issue. However, it is a moot point now as Microsoft appears to have removed the Win10 v1909 ISO link from their website. Since it is no longer a download option, there is no choice other than to try to resolve the issue with Win10 v2004.

When you install it with the network disconnected, do not connect to activate when prompted to do so - just run it as unactivated for now for testing purposes.

 

[IBMJunkman]

Well, Whocrashed reports NTOSKRNL.exe or NTKRNLMP.exe are the problems.

 

[Steltek]

Those errors very often occur with a bad stick of DRAM in my experience.

Try running the Windows Memory Diagnostic or MEMTEST86+ on the computer, one module at a time if possible.

If that doesn't find a problem, try disabling the onboard sound in the BIOS to see if the problem goes away.

That machine isn't currently overclocked, is it? If not, was it previously overclocked?

 

[IBMJunkman]

Does the memory tester stop on an error? I have run it with all 4 sticks in the machine and it was like watching paint dry. The next thing I know the machine has restarted and if there is a log I don’t know where it is.

Those errors very often occur with a bad stick of DRAM in my experience.

Try running the Windows Memory Diagnostic or MEMTEST86+ on the computer, one module at a time if possible.

If that doesn't find a problem, try disabling the onboard sound in the BIOS to see if the problem goes away.

That machine isn't currently overclocked, is it? If not, was it previously overclocked?

 

[Steltek]

No, it will normally run to completion. At the end, it will give you a pop-up asking if you want to review the test results. From your description, the computer just shut down part way through. And, the "watching paint dry" analogy is apt - it is worse than that, even.

Since the memory diagnostic was actually running outside of Windows, it is looking more and more like the problem is specifically hardware related. My first suspicion would have been the PSU, but you've already changed that out and it still shuts off (presuming the replacement wasn't a dud as well, though not likely). I'm thinking at this point the motherboard might have developed a fault (bad capacitor, or a trace is heating and separating) as a motherboard is more likely to fail than a CPU.

Has this machine ever been overclocked before? I wonder if maybe a little boost to the voltage for the CPU and/or memory would stabilize it? Also, if you haven't done so, you might install HWmonitor and watch the temps up until Windows shuts down again to see if the CPU might be overheating.

If you want to eliminate the CPU as the culprit, you could buy a $10 used Pentium G440 or G1610 CPU off eBay.

 

[IBMJunkman]

Running Memtest86+ from a bootable CD with all 4 sticks installed. Will see what happens.

 

[IBMJunkman]

Ran mem test for 3 hours with no errors. CPU temp stayed at 80c the whole time with CPU fan running fine.

 

[IBMJunkman]

Set OC to first predefined option. 4.0ghz. Rebooted while I was entering the password. Reset back to default. Moved SSD to SATA3 connector. Booted to normal. After a short period rebooted on its own.

I erased the HD partition and defined 1 large partition. Install from CD with no network connection. Now sitting on standard desktop. No Nvidia drivers installed.

version info:

Win 10 Pro
version 2004
build 19041.264
experience 120.2202.130.0

what the heck is experience?

 

[IBMJunkman]

Well, just rebooted while doing nothing. A whole 5 minutes. Think it is server material?

 

[IBMJunkman]

Just found this in an Anandtech article.

It’s worth noting that since the launch of the Core i7-2600K, we have moved on from Windows 7 to Windows 10. The Core i7-2600K doesn’t even support AVX2 instructions, and wasn’t built for Windows 10, so it will be interesting to see where this plays out.

Am I pushing a rock uphill?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, the in-box iGPU drivers for Sandy Bridge's iGPU portion, are minimalistic, and there are supposedly no newer Win10 drivers from Intel, because that platform is (effectively) EOL.

That doesn't mean that its CPU cores won't boot Windows 10 though.

 

[IBMJunkman]

Well, the Asrock site has Win10 files.

ASRock > Fatal1ty P67 Professional

Premium Gold Caps (2.5 x longer life time), 100% Japan made high quality conductive polymer capacitors; Digi Power, Advanced V16 + 2 Power Phase Design; Supports Intel K-Series unlocked CPU; Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2133(OC); Integrated PLX PEX8608 chip onboard to offer sufficient PCI-E lanes...

www.asrock.com