Windows 8.1 computer shuts down unexpectedly.

Hi disgruntled Users..................

I can sympathise with your comments, but unless we help and give some information to track this problem down it will just go on and on and on.

I have a machine that is doing the same thing, usually it stays on for a hour or so and then shuts down, it will then go through its diagnostic routine but after starting it will usually shutdown again in approx. 15mins.

This is very regular but the intervals between shutdowns can vary a lot.

What I have done so far as the Event logs just say it has shutdown unexpectedly. is Run chkdsk , no problems found, run SFC again no problems found and as a last resort I have changed the complete motherboard, and still the system does the same.

So I am inclined to believe that it is Windows8.1  and thus needs some diagnostic checking by Microsoft to locate this problem area.    It does not seem to matter if you are running any programs, it just happens, so it has to be Kernel problem as memory is not being stressed. (or maybe a driver).

I really need an answer to this hassle, as I have a customer who is getting really annoyed and I am spending a lot of time trying to find this 'fault'.

Please Microsoft, give us some pointers, so we can sort this quickly, people are asking me should I upgrade to windows8.1, at present I say NO!!

This problem is rendering my Windows 8.1 machine as useless.  Having the machine just shutdown in the middle doing work is unacceptable.  There must be a solution out there but we need a reply from MS that this is being pursued. 

My wife has a laptop with Windows 8.1 and it does not have this problem, so there must be a difference between her machine and all of us other folks that are having the problem.  Her laptop did come with Windows 8.1 already installed, however, it sounds like others that have---also have the issue. 

Microsoft, pleeeeaaaaase help!

I have provided the logs requested, and in return received instructions on how to diagnose the problem that included broken links to non-existing pages and wording that may be accurate for other versions of Windows, but not for 8.1.  Even once I figured out how to do what they asked, the machine did not stay alive long enough to finish the diagnostics.  My laptop is pretty much a doorstop at this point.  I guess I should apologize to all the doorstops out there.  At least they function as designed.

To Nedjavaman.

I can fully understand your problem, but I think I have cured the problem with my win 8.1 shutting down abou every 15mins, but the system would first stay up for about an hour.   So it could be the same problem on your machines.

As john 721 has said his wifes machine is working fine, and I do know other windsows8.1 aew working fine, hence my different tack on the problem.

Now what I have found is the Hard Drive is the cause of all the problems, to get to this pijt I have changed the PPSU and the Motherboard as it is a desktop, and the fault was still there.  Hence my attention turned to the Software or Drive, excluding the Software, as above, I took out the drive and tested it connected on a USB port adaptor on a win7 machine, one can download test programs from the drive manufacture's sites.  With this tester I found that the drive was happy when cold, but after an hour it got quite warm and then started to play up.

It turned out to be a faulty inferface board on the drive (these cannot be changed easily) so I purchased a new drive of the same size and cloned the old drive to the new one, using Acronis software (trial version), and also fixed a fan on the old drive to try and keep it cool while copying.

All went well with the copy, but some bad sectors showed up on the new drive, these were copied from the old one (part of the cause of the machine shutting down)

I then had to do a refresh on the Win8.1 and since then all has been great.

So I for one will apologise to Microsoft, it was not there software, it was just a bad drive.

So give it a go a 500G drive cost me £45, and all is now brilliant.

I too have the same problems with Window 8.1, shutting down every 30 minutes. I have tried all the suggestions including 7GB of virtual memory.  Nothing changes.  This is a Microsoft problem and it is costing all of us a lot in terms of time and money.  It is time that Microsoft chimed in on this issue and admitted to the problem Come on Microsoft, your people are smarter than this, are they not?  Or, maybe they just don't care. They were quick to take our money for the product.  If this is an example of what we can expect in the future, I will not be buying their next windows update.