Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   This happened last night - a fairly quiet evening. I was finished with what I needed to do and was simply listening and watching a youtube video I had downloaded. It was just music with photos of tropical tranquility phasing from one to another.

   I am running Win 10 (the latest that I know about).

   Suddenly, the screen froze and the speakers issued an extremely loud static sound. I could not get a mouse to work (or even see). I could not get any response from the keyboard. I finally pressed (and held) the power button. Still NOTHING. I could not even get the power button to work!

   I finally, out of desperation to stop that blasting sound, hit the button on the UPS. Blissfully quiet as it worked.

   It noticed it was an abnormal shutdown but did recover - even if it did take about 15 minutes to full boot back up again.

   How can what happened, happen? What did I do? After it came back up, I played the same video again and it worked fine! I've played that video before on this same machine with no problems.

   Just for completeness - the video was Paul Mariat's Love is Blue from 1968.

   Posted 4 years ago #
2. 

   ChrisS
   Administrator

   I've had the same problem with my media PC (running Vista) and it seems to be a "compound failure" where another program fails which then on very rare occasions results in a catastrophic Windows failure. The only fix I've found is a periodic reboot.

   If you want to troubleshoot, first, check the power settings and make sure the "Power Button" action is set to "Shut Down" (which it most likely is). Next, check the "reallocated sector count" on the SMART info for the drive (the number should be 0) just to verify that your drive isn't failing (which it probably isn't) but a bad sector in the video could take down the video player (it shouldn't kill the system though). I'd also run "chkdsk" or similar utility to specifically look for bad sectors.

   Once you've confirmed it's not a drive problem check the error log and see if you can identify errors prior to the system failure. It's not the video or the video player since they work; it's something that's either not playing nicely with the video player or, most likely, a program that didn't close properly. And, FWIW, it's almost impossible to identify the culprit if you can't routinely replicate the error.

   The power button isn't a toggle switch like it once was. It's now a programmable switch and Windows intercepts the button press and takes the programmed action. Because Windows was essentially dead it couldn't take any action.

   Posted 4 years ago #
3. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   Most likely, it was just a fluke!

   I know what you mean -- if you can't get something to fail consistently, it's almost impossible to fix. I remember that happening in reverse YEARS ago. I was trying to get a Calcomp plotter to talk properly with the IBM mainframe and send files to it. I finally got it to work -- without changing the program -- and never touched it again! I was afraid to do it. Oddly enough, when that same plotter went through the VAX system, it didn't have any problems. BTW - to show how long ago that was - I was using FORTRAN.

   I'll just leave it. Since it was several days ago, I probably couldn't find an error long.

   Posted 4 years ago #
4. 

   Tiffany
   Member

   Could be a number of things. Motherboard failing, drives, graphics, even BIOS. A check of your Problem Report might help. Sometimes just a clean out of dust in the case makes a difference. Even Malware.

   Posted 4 years ago #
5. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   Tiffany, If it's a motherboard failing, graphics or drivers, there's a really big problem. I've only had this thing for a little over a month and I didn't get it used!

   I've run Malwarebytes and finally got a clean run (after cleaning out the temp folder and the recycle bin). i don't think that's it.

   Posted 4 years ago #
6. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   The default for many devices that come with win10 is to never turn off. Win10 also can interface with, and even control &/or make changes to the system BIOS. That's where you get into, as Chris posted, "The power button isn't a toggle switch like it once was." And AFAIK it's not irreversible. On all of our Windows devices I've got Hibernate turned off, got them configured to actually power off -- the actual settings available vary on the individual devices, & in a couple of cases I had to change BIOS settings.

   It noticed it was an abnormal shutdown but did recover - even if it did take about 15 minutes to full boot back up again.

   That bothers me. Win10 is Very good about not getting damaged files from a hard shutdown or crash -- I have occasional problems with a soundcard driver causing a BSD on waking from sleep, and it always starts right back up, and a disk check always shows no problems. Before I upgraded this PC's board & CPU it had a problem when after waking from sleep, the CPU would not throttle back down. I experimented with Hibernate, and when it didn't work right it took a Long time to restart -- I found that if I forced a shutdown by holding the power button while it was trying to restart, then it would ignore the hibernate file and just start normally.

   If hibernation is on there will be a C:\hiberfil.sys file. To turn it on/off, at the Command Prompt, powercfg /h off -- powercfg /h on

   Posted 4 years ago #
7. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   The "15 minutes" may have been a slight exaggeration but it did take a bit. I got a list in the upper left corner of "corrections" being taken and then it went on. The longest delay seems to be after that and the screen goes black for several minutes. Once it starts up again, there's a second delay after it show my normal screen but there's the blue "working" circle and not much to see other than the recycle bin.

   Posted 4 years ago #
8. 

   Tiffany
   Member

   Ah new computer. You may have a UEFI firmware loading issue. Not sure how to check that as my computer is still old. Usually when I have a windows problem I let windows fix it through the troubleshooter. Most times it fixes itself. Otherwise its the repair shop. My laptop is newer and yes I have the hibernate taken off with the same sleep problems.

   Posted 4 years ago #
9. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   If everything's all right now, I think it was Windows just fixing things -- Microsoft's been adding many self-correction features, e.g. automatically uninstalling a problem update during booting or startup.

   If it happens all the time -- not just that once -- some people have been reporting a bug or bugs for the last several months with a black screen when win10's starting. I think it might be a few related bugs, since the advice I've seen on how to deal with it has changed every time a new update came out.

   I did experience something odd with one of our devices, with win10 suddenly taking longer than usual to finish loading once you logged in. Troubleshooting, I tried turning off some of the stuff that starts with Windows, using Settings -> Apps -> Startup. I was surprised to see that every app I had turned off was still starting with Windows, and even more surprised next startup when things were back to normal. I never did find anything saying if that was unusual or not, but I didn't look too hard either, as it seemed to be fixed.

   A few notes: The free, portable Crystal Disk Info is a great little tool to check a disk's S.M.A.R.T. data that Chris talked about. Chris also mentioned chkdsk -- it still works & applies after all these years, and is still needed if Win10's Error checking [right click a drive/partition -> Properties -> Tools] does find any errors. If you search for info on fixing anything related to Win10 you'll almost unavoidably see recommendations to run different commands using Windows DISM [Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool], which among many other things can scan &/or repair Windows system files, comparing them to the win10 image file on the Recovery partition or a setup disk, USB stick, or ISO. The Ultimate Windows Tweaker can make that Much easier -- neowin[.]net/news/ultimate-windows-tweaker-47

   Posted 4 years ago #
10. 

    Dragonlair
    Member

    The slow startup is ONLY when I have to do the HARD power down. I turn the machine off every night (along with modem, router and monitor). Most days, it's almost completely up before I leave the room! I turn it on, then go elsewhere to start my morning routine and then come back for a few minutes.

    Today I started it up, grabbed the tablet that was recharging overnight to take to the kitchen and I heard the startup sound before I got out the door. Each version of Windows is generally faster starting than the previous one.

    Posted 4 years ago #

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