Windows 10: Spontaneous Crashes of unknown origin

So, I've been running into this issue for the past month or so, I hope that someone can get to me on this. It's primarily an issue whenever I'm playing a game, namely Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Crusader Kings 3, and Wasteland 3.I checked the Reliability History and the earliest viable log is about this&

:)

 

all games crash!

I suggest you run rthdribl > http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/archives/rthdribl_1_2.zip
Increase the window size step by step and watch your vga temps permanently.
What happens?
If it crashes, run at stock speeds as suggested before and retry.

P.S.: When your system locks, does the display signal turn off after a time?
Stuttering sound or no sound at all when freezing?
What X1800XT model do you own exactly?

 

Computer refuses signon with unknown password


Our computer has mysteriously acquired an unknown password and refuses any signon. We have purposely omitted any signon password (hit return at prompt) because our computers are secure. So the spontaneous injection of a password is problematical. We have tried most recently internally used passwords for applications (starting with the most recent) but nothing works. Short of calling Microsoft does anyone have a suggestion?

We have not originated an account with MS or created any hierarchy of accounts. One user and one signon in an isolated environment.

 

Spontaneous crashes / reboots


Hi All,

I’ll start with a potential apology – my W10 PC is crashing – but not with a blue screen. I’m posting here because I couldn’t see anywhere more appropriate. [EDIT - there obviously was a more appropriate place & I see this post has been moved. Thankyou whoever fixed that for me!]

Background: I have a home-built desktop PC, which has been successfully running W7 Home rock solid since it was built.
Topline specs are:

• Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor
• Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
• Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
• Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU II OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
• XFX Pro 550W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply
• Crucial MX100 256GB SSD (for system)
• Toshiba 1TB SATA HDD (for files)
• Two DVD±RW SATA ReWriters
• 3.5" Internal Card Reader

Two weeks ago I allowed W7 to upgrade to W10. Initially it was quite unstable, but I uninstalled various bits of old / incompatible software and it improved dramatically. (Getting rid of Acronis 2014, which I gather is a frequent culprit for W10 crashes, worked wonders).

But the PC still has a persistent regular crash / reboot once or twice per day and I simply can't eliminate it. It’s not a classic ‘blue screen’ crash – the screens go black & the machine simply reboots spontaneously. Sometimes when it’s being used, sometimes when it’s unattended (I know it’s happened because Chrome has closed & offers to restore tabs when I reopen it).

Looking at Event Viewer (which I’m none too sure how to interpret properly at the best of times…) it says “The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly”
Source: Kernel-Power; Event ID 41; Task Category (63); Bugcheck codes all ‘0’s.

Here’s what I’ve done with no success:

• Opened up the case and reseated memory, graphics card, ATX cable, various other cables. A couple of weeks prior to getting W10 I’d installed a new internal card reader, which worked fine under W7 – but it occurred to me I may have disturbed something whilst I was in there. There was nothing amiss though.
• Windows Update is not allowed to automatically restart the PC.
• Turned off Fast Startup in the hidden Power Settings (following a YouTube instructional vid).
• Checked my video drivers are up to date (the GeForce Experience software takes care of this for me)

...and at that I’m kind of out of ideas. Looking online the problem seems very common, but with no definitive fix. I’ve considered that my PSU is failing, but it worked fine with W7, so I’m dubious about that.

I’d really rather not do a clean install of W10. Everything I read suggests that it doesn’t help, and I really can’t face the mammoth reinstall of all the family’s software. If it came to that I’d rather roll back to W7, which worked great for years.

But I do like W10 a lot, and it’s running well on various computers in my office, and on my just-for-fun Microserver at home. So I’d like to keep it on my main PC if I can make it stable.

I’ve attached a DM Log as per the sticky post, and will gladly add any more info / logs that you might want to see (might need to be told how to gather them…). Any advice anyone out there could give would be very gratefully received. Thanks for reading this marathon post!

cheers, Simon