My pc recently overheated and shut down, which made me finally get in there and clean it out. Ever since then, it reboots at seemingly random times while I’m gaming (WoW these days). I did a little research and noticed that that’s fairly common. I made sure my drivers were up to date and looked for loose connections inside, but I’m still getting reboots. I’ve reached the limit of what I can handle on my own and wanted to ask here before hiring a tech. Any helpful thoughts?
One thing I would check is run it with the side off the case for a bit. If that doesn’t stop it or decrease the frequency it means something is overheating still. If you have a small fan try pointing that into the case to see if that changes the frequency as well.
I did just have a thought, when you were cleaning it out did you remove the fan off the CPU to clean that area as well? If you did you might have to redo the thermal paste between the CPU and the CPU fan. If that layer is missing even partially it would inhibit the transfer of heat from the CPU to the fan so it wouldn’t be cooling it completely.
Actually sometimes the thermal paste itself can just dry out and become brittle and not conduct heat as well. So even if you didn’t remove the fan it could still be a possible cause of the problem.
Mith
Run the System File Checker tool (SFC.exe)
actually this is in 2 parts run ’ DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth ’ then once thats done run ’ sfc /scannow’
here is the microsoft page explaining how to do it all. This will check and repair your secret hidden copy of windows and then with sfc command replace any corrupt files it finds.
If it keeps corrupting after it fixes stuff you probably have a faulty memory module
wont do any harm running it anyway
Other options:
- Temperatures. I use HWMonitor from CPUID to monitor my temperatures. Check if all your fans are spinning, especially on your GPU.
- Make sure everything is firmly seated, test and push in memory modules, your GPU, all other PCI cards you may have.
When I had these errors, my GPU was dying, and was spiking energy usage, triggering the power supply and thus shutting down the system completely. I hope that’s not the case for you, though!
Thanks for the replies. I’m working through them bit by bit, but got distracted trying to update the bios.
It seems that Asus now only provides an updater tool that requires a version of the Intel Management Engine Interface that doesn’t seem to be available anymore. I have a Z87 mobo which supports 4th gen core processors. The only IME I can find is for 6th-8th gen. I also can’t find the bios renamer that was used in updating the bios with a usb drive. I guess I’m stuck with an old bios.
I got HWMonitor installed and researched what the max temp should be. If the system reboots, how will I be able to tell if that was due to temp or not? Is there a log somewhere that would show the last temps recorded by HWM?
Just keep an eye on it, if you see it only climbing then there’s an issue. But generally these crashes are caused by hardware issues (at least for me).
I had a case of random lock up and reboots that drove me crazy for a few months. Turned out to be bad power supply.
It can be any one or more of the things mentioned above, the issue is trying to isolate the problem without spending lots of money substituting parts that can be very expensive and may make no difference to the problem. Running SFC will prove that the OS is not corrupt and is a cost free option . The next thing I would try if possible is the memory. Depending on how much you have in your machine if possible remove half the memory ( if you have 4 pieces its safe to remove 1 pair ) if the fault persists then try the other pair , if it still persists your memory is probably ok. If you only have 2 memory modules then this doesn’t work .
If you have already cleaned out all the fans and not noticed any improvement in how long before the machine crashes that’s probably not it either. Wow is not that taxing to run and temps shouldn’t be that high anyway
The next stage is to start substituting parts which can get expensive and may be the time to start looking for a shop to look at it for you unless you have the spare parts of course.
PSU could be the issue, as could the video card or even the MB itself
Probably enough to get on with for now