Laptop randomly shutting down

Hi,

I have the Clevo P650SG laptop that I bought in February. This has happened about 4 time in all now, but while doing regular work, it has randomly shut down for no reason.

The first few times, I was just doing work on spreadsheets, and this last time I had been gaming for about an hour, then quit that and moved to spreadsheet work. After about 10 mins, it just shut down on its own.

I'm not sure if this is a heat issue (While gaming my GPU went to 75 degree Celsius and CPU cores were at 70 or below), which I don't think should be a problem for this system, or if perhaps its a faulty component or something else, like perhaps a setting I need to change in the BIOS.

Any thoughts appreciated.

 

most Intel CPU won't throttle down until 90c-100c and I don't think they shutdown until 105c, or even higher, so you were nowhere near shutdown temps, unless the program wasn't showing temp properly.
Check if BIOS has any hardware alerts, or event viewer in control panel recorded any alerts around the time your system crashed, also check voltages, but it could be some hardware/connection failure. Such intermittent failure is very hard to troubleshoot, unless there is known fault with system component. If you send it for repair, very likely they'll find nothing and send back, so you best bet is hoping whatever the fault there is, gets worse or you find some certain circumstances where it happens more often, like moving laptop around.

 

Thanks. This is what I was afraid of. It happened again day before yesterday. I'm going to observe this further and see what happens. I do recall that the first few times it happened in February, system was just running idle or I was doing basic spreadsheet work. In addition to temps, I wonder if it could be something related to SSD or perhaps the memory sticks...

 

That is odd to shut down without a BSOD. You do keep your battery installed all the time right? Slighty odd question but some people do like to remove it while plugged in.
Also do you recall if this happens while plugged into AC only or Battery only?

 

Yes, the battery is installed all the time. In fact, I don't think its possible to run the P650SG with the batter removed, as it is internal. And this issue has always happened with the unit plugged in on AC. I don't know if this is worth mentioning but I use a surge protector (not sure if that has anything to do with the problem).

 

You're right about the battery.
I dont think it would be the surge protector unless its getting some short in it. Try another one if you can.

 

My P670SG is behaving the same way but the restarts are far more common. I have had the laptop less than a month and it has happened more than 5 times. Seems to be completely random though gaming prevents it as far as I can tell. Perhaps desktop gpu switching is causing the issue but I have no way so far to lessen or prevent it.

 

Sounds like an Intel iGPU issue. Maybe look into reinstalling the Intel display drivers?
I'm guessing every time the dGPU is going back to sleep via Optimus, it takes the computer with it.
Please update status. I'm pretty close to buying P650SG and this is hugely worrisome for me.

 

Can you two tell me what kind of shutdowns? Does windows attempt to shutdown then "crash" off? Or does it just black-screen shutdown?

 

Windows attempts to shutdown then never completes the action and just hard shuts down. When I restart it says windows was not shut down properly.

 

You have voltage fluctuation issues. I had that issue. You need to buy a Line Conditioner for your house, and likely yell at your power company.
I suggest the APC Line-R 1200va for a good line conditioner.

 

Similar. Its a hard shutdown for me as well. When I power on, it says windows was not shut down properly and hive me the option to boot in safe mode and the other options.

 

Yeah what's happening is that the voltage is tripping the power button into "pressing" itself (causes windows to shut down) then it holds itself down (shutoff). If you were to disable the power button in windows, you would simply get black screen shutdowns randomly, instead of seeing windows enter the shutdown state.

 

Okay, so then do I need to use both the line conditioner and the surge protector? Do I insert the surge protector into the line conditioner and insert the laptop charger into the surge protector? or am I just complicating things?

 

Line conditioner alone is also a surge protector (at least the one I listed). Just plug that into the wall and your laptop into it. Set it to the middle option (120Hz I believe). Then just enjoy.

 

Thank you! Will give this a shot.

 

Acquired UPS. Laptop still behaves the same way. I have been monitoring the wall voltages and they are never more than a few volts above or below 120, usually hovering at 119, and when the laptop shuts down on the UPS the volts don't budge. I am more inclined to think it is a bad component.

 

Could be weak vrms, they are under most stress going from load to idle.

 

It never behaves this way when I am transitioning from load to idle or when I am playing a game. I only experience this when I am surfing the web or when the laptop is simply idle.

 

I wonder if the chipset or surface mount part is getting too hot then and the airflow when the system fans are working harder is keeping it ok?

 

It actually seems to have been related to the Intel HD 4600 driver shipped with the laptop being incompatible with Firefox. I noticed it only ever happened when I hadd Firefox running but updating to the latest driver fixed the problem...

 

Interesting, must be some sort of acceleration having an issue.

 

yup.