Puzzled by shutdown

[Taffycat]

Last night, the PCs were left ticking over as usual, but when I came into their room 20 minutes ago, they were completely dead, (feet up at the bottom of their cages )

The power switches were still switched on (at the mains I mean,) the surge protectors were still glowing as normal, the router also was lit up as it normally would be.

I checked both computers' Event Logs to see what I could turn-up. XP didn't report anything odd, Vista reported that at 3-39:31 (this morning) there had been an "Unexpected Shutdown." As for the reason... I just haven't been able to find one.

Would you advise me to keep looking, or just put it down to "one of those things" that occasionally happens? I hate mysteries, but cannot seem to find any "clues," and not sure where else to look.

Electrical gadgets around the house all seem to be functioning okay, including the electric clock-radio and central heating clock... so no obvious signs of their having been a break in the current.

Thank you for reading, any suggestions would be very welcome

Edit: I think I have probably posted this in the wrong Forum... brain isn't in gear yet, I'm sorry about that

 

[Ian]

That is a strange one indeed - as it happened to more than one PC then it may have just been a power cut. If it was very short, it might have been enough to trip the PCs but not enough to reset clocks around the house.

You might be able to check the router logs via the web admin page and see if that was reset too

 

[Taffycat]

Oh thank you Ian, I had a look at the router log, and that just mentioned that at "3-22:47 Router Startup" then at "3-24:32 No Reply" ... so it looks as if you could be correct about a short-ish power-cut.

Thank you for moving this, btw - my mind was so "busy" on the shut-down that I simply didn't think

 

[muckshifter]

You probably had a "spike drop" in power to the house, it happens to me often, 'old flats' don't get clean power from the grid.


Two of my PCs will shutdown, two others, inc' The MJW PC, will carry on regardless and one will reboot 'cos I told it to in the BIOS ... on most occasions.

 

[Taffycat]

I have known these to keep going when there has been a slight "glitch" in the power, but it must have been a longer one this time, to have knocked-out both of them. I think the strangest thing was coming into a totally silent room, no fans murmering in the background

It struck me as being a good idea to do a complete scan with KIS... but oddly, that seems to have "stuck" on just 52%, so I'm hoping the shut-down hasn't caused any problems.

 

[muckshifter]

Naw, I doubt it, KIS can take an age for a full scan ... I don't 'schedule' a full scan with KIS, I only run it on the odd occasion if I'm board.


You should be able to set the BIOS to restart the PC after a power-cut like that, been meaning to do all these also, but always forget at the next MS-forced reboot.

 

[Taffycat]

Oh, I've usually found KIS to be pretty nippy when I've done a full scan on here - possibly because the HD is not very full however, it certainly doesn't seem to like something called... wait for it:
C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\b2ee164db645e6bc8d77bb51f082e3b3\cbshandler\
gasp... which is what it is "stuck" on. I'm currently looking at the Kaspersky Forum just to see whether anyone else has said anything about it, but no joy so far. Perhaps it is having a struggle with the recent SP1 download.

Re enabling the BIOS to restart the PC, that might make rather a good "How To" sticky thread here, if I might make so bold, for those of us who are a bit "BIOS challenged"

 

[muckshifter]

That's the Windows update storage folder, an "archive" folder so you can uninstall any 'naughty' update ... do not delete it, or get KIS to 'fix' it, leave it be ... you could do with telling KIS to just do a quick scan and not an in-depth scan ... scanning files like that can take forever, another reason I don't bother doing a "full" scan unless I think something may be wrong.

As for a "how to" on the BIOS ... you got Bob Hope & No Hope ... sorry, but the BIOS is not a "standard" to do an easy tutorial on. Look, and ye shall find, try the MB manual first.

 

[Taffycat]

Oh thanks for the advice Mucks, I have stopped the scan now. I thought that it might be something to do with updates but it's always nice to have one's suspicions confirmed

Re the BIOS ... aww shame, but I should have realised that it wouldn't be quite that simple Can't blame a cat for trying though I shall look into it a bit more when I have an interruption-free hour... at present I'm sort-of "multi-tasking" with other things, as you do