Posted on 08/30/2015 11:13:31 AM PDT by Maceman
Back in May or June, after my Dell Laptop crashed and a month of tech support from Dell proved ineffective, they they sent me a new (i.e. refurbished) E6540 laptop (running Windows 7) which I've had for about two months now.
All of a sudden, today for the first time, the E6540 has started shutting down randomly for no reason. When I start it up again, it gives me the message about having shut down incorrectly and an option to run Windows in safe mode.
This has happened a few times today. I'm running Microsoft Security Essentials, which says the system is protected and doesn't show any infections. I don't know if this could be a virus, or a glitch that might be fixed by setting a restore point to an earlier date.
Has anyone run into this problem? Anyone have any (productive) thoughts or suggestions?
Will converting to Windows 10 be a possible solution? (I'm really not in a hurry to do that at this point.)
As always, I'll much appreciate any help my fellow Freepers can provide.
Thanks in advance.
poss updates..then automatic shutdown?...
Sounds like something got corrupted in the OS boot process.
Try a restore pint if you can, if not reinstall the OS software.
I don’t see how Win 10 would solve this. I’d look into the windows event logs and see if anything is occurring when the shutdown happens.
Do you have battery power. My battery in by dell xps13 got so bad it wouldn’t run w/out being plugged in. Make sure it’s plugged in and the power chord works (the light is on and all connections are tight.)
If that doesn’t work go into safe mode before it completely boots up and run diagnostics from there.
Because you teased all those women on Tinder.....
Could be some kind of hardware problem. Stuck button or switch, overheating, hard drive malfunction - a lot of possibilities.
bad fan & overheating?
Sounds like a hardware problem to me too. I always keep my laptop on a cooling fan stand to dissipate some of the heat. They do get hot and that would cause constant shut downs.
Thanks. How do I find and access (and understand?) the windows event logs?
This sort of problem is much more common with HP laptops, associated with bad power supplies.
There are too many malicious apps out there these days to even guess.
You are almost better off these days if you are adventurous and go to new sites all the time is to surf from a VM.
To me it sounds like a hardware failure. Hard Drive, CPU, memory or something. Could it just be overheating?
It could be a hard drive failure In the Run command (press Windows key and r key together and let go) type
eventvwr
and hit OK. Then under Custom views hit Administrative events (do not be surprised by all the errors) and look for what coincides with the shutdown.
Upgrading to W/10 is unlikely to help it.
Could also be a fan failed and it is too hot.
As Ol Hickory said, it’s either Win7 Updates forcing the SHUTDOWN or you’ve got a HEAT problem. Blow all vents (on the bottom) OUT, also Keyboard on top with compressed AIR, in a can if you have to.
Good thought, Maceman, check your air intakes to make sure they are clean and the computer is getting sufficient air flow.
I had a similar situation a few years ago with a Dell desktop. The problem was caused by a broken heatsink hold-down bracket. While most of the time, everything was fine, occasionally the CPU would overheat and shut down randomly. There was no obvious pattern to the shutdowns. I don’t recall whether or not there was any error message on restarting.
In my folks case, it was a stuck on/off button due to crud in it.
Could be the BIOS, I had that happen to me when I had my old laptop, or the GPU somehow got messed up. Doesn’t sound like a virus to me, you would get a blue screen if it were a virus, try doing a clean install of windows 7, 8 or 10, whichever you prefer and see if you have the same problem
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