PC shutting down ?
PC shutting down ?
Good morning everyone,
Apologies for choosing a generic title, but I’m still unsure about the right name for this discussion. In any case, I was assisting my mother with a problem on a computer she built several years ago.
Basic details:
- AMD Ryzen 1600X
- Aorus B450 Elite
- 16 GB GDDR6 (flash x believe)
- Windows 10
- GT 710 graphics card
She mainly uses it for everyday tasks like email, bills, and YouTube. Nothing unusual at all. She’s mentioned for a few weeks that she’d wake up to see the lights on but the computer would just shut down. The surge protector needed resetting to get it back online. At first, I thought it was a faulty surge protector, but later realized it wasn’t the main issue.
I visited her house recently to try troubleshooting. The problem was that the machine would shut down during normal operations. I checked for overheating and found everything normal. In the Event Viewer, I saw errors about secure boot not being enabled and warnings related to distribution.com. By the time I arrived, it had stopped working 4–5 times in about five minutes.
After setting secure boot in BIOS with standard settings (no custom parameters), updating the registry, and running Windows updates, the machine ran smoothly for two days without issues. It restarted after about twelve hours and only showed a critical BSOD once. I also tested it remotely under heavy load and it performed well.
The only warning in Event Viewer was a yellow (not red) alert from distribution.com. I didn’t run any memory tests or NVMe checks since the secure boot errors were resolved.
If I had to guess, I’m not sure what else could be missing—other than backing up the machine, wiping it, and installing Windows 11.
Thanks for your input before I decide to proceed with a clean slate.
The power supply model is unknown, but its age cannot be determined from the provided details.
EVGA Supernova 650. I’m not sure which version it is—P5 seems most recent. It’s probably around 3-4 years old. I might have a spare unit in another machine that’s also 3 years old but unused. If it has over 100 hours, I’d be surprised.
@Roland Of Gilead
I should note I reassembled everything. I replaced the GPU, RAM sticks, even re-applied thermal paste and verified all PSU connections.
Still, my first guess was about the power supply, but enabling secure boot helped prevent the sudden shutdowns, making me reconsider.
I'll try it out and let you know the results. Thanks everyone. I'll share my findings soon. It should take a few days to set up, swap, and test.
Started working on the machine today to swap out the PSU. My mom thought she just wanted to replace it instead of pulling the other one. I was mistaken about which PSU was in the system. The old unit was actually a Seasonic X SS-760Km model from around 2011, solid and 14 years old. We'll see how it goes and will update soon. It's running now; I ran chkdsk and SFC while it was on, and cleaned up any issues found just to be safe.