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there it is I have a problem I just

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updated the BIOS on my workstation and ever since I did it's been randomly

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shutting off just while I'm not doing anything and while normally that's the

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sort of thing that I would troubleshoot myself I have another problem and that

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is that if I don't leave to start my vacation in the next 3 minutes my wife

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is going to absolutely murder me

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so we're going to call in the Cavalry here dialing a for

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Anthony uh Hey Anthony uh

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hello can you fix something for me maybe

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okay cool my computer's turning off and I got to

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go man I just got back from vacation and

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I'm already doing tech support well hey

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why not come along for the ride and I'll show you my method for troubleshooting

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barely any information to go off of right after this information for our

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sponsor thanks to hulman for sponsoring this video Hulk man's Alpha 85s helps

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you instantly jump start your dead car battery with no Aid required even in up

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to minus 40° F learn more at lm. g/

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hulman minus tells me that he updated the BIOS in order to upgrade to Windows

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11 and the computer's been shutting off randomly ever since doesn't matter what

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he's doing even absolutely nothing let's see if we can track down the issue now

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the first rule of thumb when doing any kind of troubleshooting always check the

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most basic Solutions first so we'll start with the wall power and um H

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actually he's got a UPS down here and I don't think anything else has been

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turning off randomly like the TV still got power from what he told me so that's

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probably not going to be our problem that leaves us to the

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cables which well I'm going to have a hard time

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getting in under there and you're not going to be able to see that either uh

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because not only is it kind of dark but

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the TV is also covering it all up but it looks

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like the 8 pin 12volt connector looks like it's okay actually there's multiple

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there and they both look like they're down all the way and the 24 pin ATX

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connector is also pretty solid there so I don't think

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that's our problem either now the system has a Threadripper CPU and sometimes

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over toring the retention mechanism can flatten out the socket's pins so that

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the CPU is not making contact which can make for a no power on but that doesn't

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match the description of the issue where it's happening even when the system is

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idle and besides I don't think I'm going to be able to open this thing up without

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some help and I'd really rather not do that for now we'll fire it up and move

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on maybe we'll get lucky first we'll open up a system monitoring tool like HW

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info and see what our temperatures and voltages look like and we'll also load up task manager to see if any processes

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are running wild and check to make sure that there's nothing weird showing up in

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the startup items CPU usage looks okay to me right

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now we're at 3% with uh only a few things actually being used right now

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you've got OBS running and uh I guess lonus is doing some idle mining which is

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fine as long as you are not specifically using your GPU for that as for the

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temperatures they look okay they're a little high but at the same time we've

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got a GPU doing idle mining on a closed

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loop like this or it's not really a closed loop but like it's sharing the

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cooling between the CPU and GPU and the CPU is currently idling it around uh in

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the 40s 50s or 60s depending on what's Happening normally depending on the CPU

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the enclosure and the cooling you have on your system it'll usually hover

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around 30 or 40 somewhere in there as it is right now I'm not concerned about The

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Thermals at all it seems perfectly fine to me yeah that's not even all that hot

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the hot spot temperatures in the 60s so this cooling setup is definitely enough

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we'll have to find something else that might be the cause of the problem we'll keep these tools open for now so we can

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keep monitoring it as we use the computer that way if anything does

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happen we can kind of be tipped off about it before it inevitably shuts down

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before we move on we should look at the voltages now something to be and bind

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about software reported CPU voltages is that they're not always correct they can

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change more quickly than they update on screen so take them with some salt it's

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also worth remembering that CPU core voltage will go higher or lower

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depending on the core clocks and what the CPU is doing thanks to load likee

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calibration a feature that tries to keep the CPU from under or overshooting its

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voltage range and crashing or potentially taking damage over time this

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throws a lot of people for a loop because even if you set the voltage

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manually in the BIOS it's not guaranteed you're going to get that voltage under

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any circumstances now this is an overclocked Threadripper 3000 so I

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can't really expect any specific voltage range but I think usually if it's in a

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low power State you can go from 0.6 all the way up to around 1.4 or more

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volts depending on the load and while nothing stands out to me right now this

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is one of the potential culprits for a random blue screen or power off so it's

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worth keeping an eye on next it's time to see what Windows recorded last time

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the PC unexpectedly powered off using Event Viewer this is built into Windows

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just right click on the startup button and go up to Event Viewer here or you

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can access it by typing this on the command prompt if you're ever really

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stuck this particular version of Event Viewer has been around since Windows

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2000 and is basically unchanged even Windows 11 we'll head over to Windows

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logs and then system now by default this is sorted by date and time so we'll

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scroll down to the last time we know what happened and see what Windows sees

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now I actually already see some things here uh so that's interesting but you can

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actually tell when Windows was shut down big gap in time followed by three event

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log items when the service is restarted and if there was a blue screen you'll

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see some bug check items labeled as critical as well you can use these items

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to see the blue screens error code which you can then use to narrow things down

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via Google this PC isn't blue screening so we don't have any bug checks well let

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us see what else is happening at the time went down and it looks like we have

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a bunch of acpi events here

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these are related to power management and that's interesting remember what I

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said about voltages earlier we might have just found some evidence for it and

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by the way you'll notice that there are a lot of items in the event log just in

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general so how do I know that what I'm looking at is what I'm supposed to look

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at well informational stuff like these things here are usually not that useful

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unless you're trying to track down something very specific and if you've been fixing Windows PCS for long enough

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you'll know that some these uh distributed Comm things are usually just

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there on a fresh install and they're entirely benign if you do want to know

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what exactly these are referring to though you can copy the string of letters and numbers and search it online

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or if you're feeling adventurous in the registry this particular one is for

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immersive shell not exactly exciting or

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relevant to what we're doing but knowing how to do this can be useful for

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tracking down misbehaving drivers and services and just knowing about it will

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help you if a scammer ever tries to convince you Windows is broken by showing you these errors it's a pretty

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common trap coming back to our main issue we've got a candidate for the

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problem but we should also check the application log to see if anything wears

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going on there this is where things like app crashes go and while these don't

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usually coincide with Windows issues if something specific keeps happening at

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the same time as a recurring problem it could be related now it doesn't look

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like there's any patterns showing up here here so we can rule this out for

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now the security logs aren't usually relevant on single user PCS but they can

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show you when you've logged in when you've used stored credentials and so on

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useful if you suspect you've been hacked or if there's a problem with Windows log

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on but it's not what we're after setup

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on the other hand are related to Windows updates and a failed or broken Windows

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update can sometimes do what we're seeing Al be usually with a reboot

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instead of a shutdown as expected most of this is unremarkable information

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about which updates have been installed when but a broken update or Windows

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update service will show errors here for now our best lead is the power

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management situation by default modern CPUs will enter a low power State when

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they're not in use called c-states not to be confused with s- States like

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sleeper hibernation these are like the performance oriented P States you might

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already be familiar with in the form of turbo boost where the CPU will wrap up

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its performance in response to load C states are just in the opposite

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direction now depending on the state the

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system might turn off some parts of the CPU or Park inactive cores to

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significantly reduce power consumption and the voltage supplied to the cores

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and therefore the CPU you can see where I'm going with this right but this is a

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desktop PC so idle power consumption isn't a major concern therefore let's

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try turning off C states to do that we'll restart into the BIOS and to do

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that first I need to stop all of these logging programs and restart the system

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oh I probably shouldn't have done that while lonus was still like doing stuff

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but oh well this is how you get into the BIOS

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usually sometimes you can get into it with F2 and you can get into it through

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Windows as well if you hold shift while clicking on restart then using the

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advanced options uh function to select UEFI firmware settings but uh we didn't

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do that and so I have to mash

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delete from here we're going to look for C States now some bioses like ASUS's

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lets you use the search function which we will use but sometimes you'll find it

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in uh like CPU configuration under Advanced or uh sometimes you'll find it

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in like power management configuration

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uh for now we'll just hit F9 to do search and do

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cstate and it is enabled sometimes you'll see two of them one for Global

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cstate control and one for c1e or enhanced halt uh if we had that here we

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would disable it as well for now let's go ahead and disable C States hit uh F10

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doesn't work from here okay so F10 to save and reset that's pretty normal

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and okay if F10 doesn't work on your BIOS for Save and reset you can just go

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to the um exit screen and it'll ask you

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if you want to save usually now that we've

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rebooted how can we know that this

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worked we can't we can't really test for a random power off event so we'll just

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need to wait I'll let it go for a few days and then we'll come back to it now

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thankfully I've got my water bottle from LTD store.com to keep my drink cold till

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then I'll just add a little bit of ice every now and then all right let's take

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a look it's still powered on that's a good sign let's see the event

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log pixel refresher I do not care about you I want to see Windows I don't see

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any of those acpi events that's a good sign that's

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really good I think we're good this was

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happening multiple times per day before and it's been a few days now and it's

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still chugging along I think it's safe to call this one fixed as for why the

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problem started happening in the first place well power management has always

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been and always will be a little bit of black magic a little tweak to how power

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management works in a BIOS update silicon degradation or even just the

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Silicon Lottery can affect how stable power management features will be for a

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given system speaking of which get subscribed because we finally have our

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this video you'll love that one it's the it's the longest video we've ever done

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except for the uog back to power management though it's

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usually fine for laptops because of how tightly integrated the CPU and the logic

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board are but not so much for desktops with modular components and longer

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traces many power management features are in fact disabled by default on a

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desktop particularly anything to do with PCI Express in my experience it's almost

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never a good idea to enable these on a desktop unless you're doing it specifically to see if it does work for

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your Hardware C states are usually okay

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but there's a reason you'll see many threads about them on forums going back

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many many years in this

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case whatever it was it seems like it was just done luck but it's fixed now

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and hopefully you'll come away from this video not only knowing that c States can

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be flaky but also a little more about how to dig in and find out what a

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problem might actually be and lonus will come back from vacation and I'll still

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have a job and hey you'll also know a little bit more about our sponsor

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the box commands to take action such as killing processes resetting user

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below thanks for watching guys this one's a bit different so why not check

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out Linus's new rack it's also a bit different and a whole lot of fun