The previous system shutdown at <<date/time>> was unexpected

All,

Have you experienced a rash of "Previous system shutdown at date/time was unexpected" errors in your Event log? Was your computer supposed to go to sleep, but it rebooted instead?

I have a Dell XPS M1530 I bought in October '08. It runs Vista 32-bit, no games, and nothing real unusual (Office products, a few well-known utilities, VMWare Workstation, Cisco VPN). I experienced the maddening "unexpected shutdown" error every 1-5 days, sometimes multiple times in one day. I Googled, of course, but nothing was particularly helpful for my situation. I engaged Dell Support, and that was unproductive, too. But I did find the root cause issue, and since I haven't seen it reported elsewhere on the 'Net, I thought I'd report it here.

After reinstalling Vista and nothing else except Acronis backup and VMWare Workstation (so I could run all my apps in a virtual machine), I was able to have a very, very clean system that still exhibited the "unexpected shutdown" problem. To rule out a hardware-based issue, I was able to use the POS diagnostics and leave the laptop turned on for 7+ hours -- it never overheated.

Interestingly, the issue appears to occur when there is no load on the system, and only when the computer is trying to conserve power by going into sleep state.

So, using MSCONFIG, I one-by-one began a process removing start-up programs and services until I found the culprit. Actually, there were two culprits:

Under the Services tab: Dell Wireless WLAN Tray Service
Under the Startup tab: Dell Wireless WLAN Card Wireless Network Tray Applet

I disabled these since last Thursday, and (knock on wood!) I haven't had the problem since.

I'm very certain about these being the culprits. With everything else enabled, I can put my computer to sleep repeatedly (I tested up to 7 times in a row) and Vista would retreat to slumberland perfectly each time. With everything disabled EXCEPT the Dell software above, I could put my computer to sleep no more than three times in a row before it would reboot unexpectedly.

I brought this up to Dell Support -- not really looking for them to do anything, since I'd identified the problem, but so they could maybe use the info to help another Dell XPS M1530 owner. BTW, I've got the Dell 1395 wireless.

Stupidly, this is the first laptop out of the five I've bought before where I didn't go with the Intel brand wireless. Now I know better. And now so do you, too!

I still can use the wireless capabilities fine, even with the above Dell stuff disabled. I don't know what Dell was trying to achieve with that startup program and service, but it's not necessary to have them to use WiFi.

I also used the power settings so the computer can't turn-off power to the wireless card (I use the hardware switch instead). Not sure if/how that might improve things, but since the problem surfaced when the computer was trying to enter sleep state, I thought it couldn't hurt to monkey with that setting.

Hopefully this can help another befuddled XPS M1530 owner!

 

You should post this on Direct2Dell.com a lot of people look for answers for problems just like this there and the mods are very helpful at getting issues sent to the appropriate department.

 

All,

I thought I would just report back to share with you my perspective on my discovered fix now several weeks later. The fix I used -- disabling the Dell WLAN start-up service and program using MSCONFIG -- has worked flawlessly to keep my XPS M1530 working as it should. Each day, Vista's Reliability Monitor graph ticks up higher and higher towards a perfect 10.0 rating. I've had no more of those unexpected shutdowns and the laptop enters into and recovers from a sleep cycle without any trouble at all. Dell Support followed up with me a short time ago and even offered to swap my wireless card from the Dell brand to an Intel card, but since wireless connectivity works fine, despite having turned off the Dell start-up service/program, I didn't take them up on the offer (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).

Hopefully any other XPS M1530 owners out there using the Dell-branded WLAN card may find this info useful if they encounter the same issue with "The previous system shutdown ... was unexpected."

 

I made an account to say this: you, famousdavis, are the man. I had this same problem coupled with the fans not turning on after system shutdown. It was absolutely driving me crazy. I did clean installs, system restores, etc, etc. Dell even had to replace the motherboard and heatsink at one point since the computer was basically melting. Nothing worked, but so far after disabling the Dell Wireless WLAN crap, I haven't had the problem reoccur.

I probably should have gone with the Intel card.

Either way, thank you!