M17x shuts off randomly

I am having an issue with my laptop. Probably twice a week, it would just shut off. This occurs even if I have my charger plugged in. The temps were fine when this happened. Any ideas?

 

Does it shut off or reboot? And what are/were you doing when these shut downs occurred?

 

Do you have any processes that might be running in the background that could request a shutdown? When it shuts down are you on battery?

 

My laptop was connected to the outlet. It will turn off and not restart. Most of the time it has been when I was web browsing or watching a movie. One time it was when I was playing crysis 3. I don't have anything in the background that would want to restart my computer.

 

Does it say that Windows has recovered from any sort of error when you start back up again?

 

I just get this when I first turn on my laptop. http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/chap1_9780789749932/elementLinks/01fig10_alt.jpg

But no error messages within windows.

 

No memory dumps within windows? If there is might be worth trying 'whocrashed' I suspect could be GPU hardward/software problem

 

Hello,

First thing i would try is a complete reinstall of windows to be sure that's not a problem.

What DDDenniZZZ says, if you have no memory dumb probably something like the GPU will be defected or something, but still that's not sure.
Try whocrashed and report here.

You can always try, check HD for errors, try to install some new driver (or reinstall).
Push some hardware to the limit and watch what happens then, take out some hardware, (like the GPU is that's possible).

Sjoerd

EDIT: this very easy to get corrupted files with a SSD, seen it many times.....
(was just thinking about that haah)

 

Are you sure the temps were fine? - an easy thing to check is wether or not the fans/heatsinks are free of debris and dust. Obviously, Crysis 3 can be quite taxing on gpu/cpu so it's possible it's a thermal shutdown. I duuno if when you were surfing/watching movies, you had adequate ventilation to the base or wether it was maybe on your lap or something that *could* block airflow......

Like I said, easy to check anyway, will rule out one thing for sure anyways....

 

Well i think i might have an idea.
I had the same issue yesterday.

I am running a nowhere-near-stock setup 24/7 and this taps allot of power from the outlet.
Yesterday i was at a friends house and one of his outlets is faulty.
So after like 9 hours all of a sudden i hard a sharp *SNAP* and the notebook just shuts off. (no reboot)

I was like......so i l rebooted the notebook. no Windows error report.
I have temps logs running 24/7 and everything was well within normal limits (GPU 78 degrees/CPU 78)

The screen was very dark and i saw that the battery indicator said it was unplugged.

When i looked at the back and check the power cable, i saw that blue cirkel (indicating it is running a current) was dark/off.
Outlet was not working......so lets say i would be tapping 180W's out of the wall and it would fall back to battery mode IN-GAME....thats no way gonna work.
A battery can never suplly that kind of Wattage.

This scenario that krazeaznboy layed out, sound like a similar scenario

 

Yes I have seen the same thing too with overloaded adapters, check the wiring if you think the adapter is good in other places.

 

My R2 is doing the almost the same thing. The screen suddenly goes black, but it reboots whereas yours shuts down completely. I suspect a hardware problem (cause that's what's causing mine). If a fan is malfunctioning, then it can cause the system to shutdown unexpectedly as the notebook will not run without the CPU fan...at all. The next possible cause is the GPU, but I am putting that low on the list of causes since you have a 680m and the system is shutting down instead of restarting. Next is the PSU. If it is malfunctioning, it can be surging to the notebook and causing the motherboard to shutoff as a protection mechanism. Last would be the motherboard itself, and it's voltage regulators going bad.

 

download coretemp and gpu-z and set the programs to make logs.
as soon as you have had your shutdown, look at your logs. that should shed some light on things.

shutdown and no restart is a bios feature against a shortciruit so my fear is that it's Power related.

 

Radji, you might check your event logs to see what occurred when the restart happened.

It does sound like a power problem in your case (which may be different from the OP's R4 problem), in which case you should get an event logged as the machine boots back up, indicating that shutdown had occurred due to under/over voltage, for example.

You don't get a BSOD, because in those situations the system design assumes the processors can't reliably run. So the status responsible for the shutdown/restart is set in a register somewhere, which is accessed upon startup, at which point an event is logged.

 

Should you get a BSOD... use Nirsoft bluescreen tool
you can use this to see why you are getting a BSOD.

 

I did get a critical error logged in the event viewer. It was always a kernel-power error so I've narrowed it down to being an actual hardware malfunction. It's either the GPU, the motherboard, or the CPU. Luis Porras is getting me a replacement 5870m and I will get it swapped out and go from there.

 

Funny thing is.,.this started happening at the same time when my laptop charger stopped working. I'm using my 2nd charger at the moment. My laptop was on my desk when it happened. I use hwinfo to monitor my temps. I know for sure heat is not the reason for it shutting down.

@radji I also have that problem. I don't turn off my computer when I go to sleep. When I open the lid, the screen would just be black and I would have to do a force shutdown. This one happens more frequently than my random shutdowns. I had this problem with my last installation of windows.

I have another 3 months before my warranty goes away. Does AW cover faulty laptop chargers?

 

you should ask Luis Pardo