# Unexpected Restart



## storm5510

When I got up this morning I found that my system had restarted itself. I thought it was because of an update. I didn't find anything to indicate an update had been installed.

I decided to check the system event logs to see if there was anything there. There was. Critical error, Event 41. This is power related. I have the BIOS setting for a power interruption set to "Stay Off." However, this was not external.

This is the second time since I installed Windows 10. Windows 7 never did this. Both times I was running a number crunching console application which makes heavy use of the GPU. The CPU drops to around 1.5 GHz when there is no load and this process doesn't use it.

So, I am wondering what the deal is. There is no way to monitor the internal output of the PSU. I can monitor the input line voltage/amperage going into the PSU with a device I have. The input load only rises 20 watts when I am running this process. In a normal transformer system, wattage is a constant. However, a PSU is probably a different story.

I am looking for ideas as to where to start searching for an issue which might cause this.


----------



## Masterchiefxx17

How often does this issue happen?


----------



## jenae

Hi, event 41 simply tells you what you already know , your computer has turned itself off, it is not a diagnostic event (critical means the system stopped functioning, no cause can be gleaned from 41 events). It could simply mean a power outage, if it occurs in conjunction with system errors and your machine blue screens, that's the time to worry... just keep an eye on it.


----------



## storm5510

Masterchiefxx17 said:


> How often does this issue happen?


My install of Windows 10 was on December 21. Now that I've had a work day to think about it, there was a restart about a week later. I believe that one was an update reboot. I didn't know about the restart request notifications at the time so it caught me off-guard. I have them on now. So, this would be the first unexpected reboot without an update.



jenae said:


> ...if it occurs in conjunction with system errors and your machine blue screens, that's the time to worry...


There was no blue-screen. It was waiting for me to log back in. I looked at the system log during the time before this happened. The only thing there was Error 46: volmgr. 

There is something immediately after: "Information Event ID 172, Kernel-Power, Connectivity state in standby: Disconnected, Reason: NIC compliance." The critical error also contains "Kernel-Power."


----------



## kauaisurf

That's the entire point of EventViewer to provide system details, jenae. Looking at the image the system clearly restarted on it's own, Kernel-Boot (30), if Windows was hanging and trying to shut down apps the error he highlighted will display. 

Windows 10 is a joke.


----------



## storm5510

kauaisurf said:


> ...Windows 10 is a joke.


It's worked pretty well for me, so far.

I found something interesting by doing a Google search. The most common reason for this error is having duplicate audio drivers. There are others. In my case, I actually had three drivers. An original, and two from nVidia. I disabled the nVidia drivers and left the one from the base install active.

It seemed odd to me that nVidia would be making audio drivers when their main products are video. Live and learn.


----------



## kauaisurf

storm5510 said:


> It's worked pretty well for me, so far.
> 
> I found something interesting by doing a Google search. The most common reason for this error is having duplicate audio drivers. There are others. In my case, I actually had three drivers. An original, and two from nVidia. I disabled the nVidia drivers and left the one from the base install active.
> 
> It seemed odd to me that nVidia would be making audio drivers when their main products are video. Live and learn.


bluescreenview, whocrashed.

Windows 10 isn't that great, especially when it eats up 50-100+ more watts with the exact hardware and identical software images of previous OS releases. Win 10 is not energy efficient.


----------



## storm5510

kauaisurf said:


> ...Win 10 is not energy efficient.


It "thrashes" my new hard drive a lot. The swap-file size is different than with Win 7. It was 4GB. This is using 700MB. I guess it thinks I don't have the room. Only 900 GB free!

I'll have to check the energy consumption. I have a way to do that...


----------

