Laptop randomly rebooting.

[chaosmarine92]

My laptop is randomly rebooting with no apparent cause. No blue screen or crash, just working normally then suddenly a black screen followed by the POST logo a few seconds later as it starts up again.

This is not the first time this has happened to this machine. Six months ago it was doing this and it got progressively worse to the point that I could only go about 5 minutes between reboots. I ran all the diagnostics I could but never found a cause. If I ran something like the windows memory diagnostic that happens before booting into windows then it could run for hours no problem. Eventually I decided to just wipe my drive and reinstall windows but I had to do that 3 times before the issue was fixed. Now though it seems to be coming back. I ran chkdsk and it completed with no issue. crystaldiskinfo doesn't show any problems with my drive.

 

Laptop specs

Model: Acer Nitro AN517-42

Bios Version: 1.16

CPU: Ryzen 7 6800H

GPU: RTX 3060 Laptop GPU

Memory: 16GB

Drive1 (boot drive) : 1TB SAMSUNG MZVL21T0HCLR-00BT7

Drive2:  2TB TEAM TM8FPD002T

 

[Sawa Takahashi]

39 minutes ago, chaosmarine92 said:

1TB SAMSUNG MZVL21T0HCLR-00BT7

I searched that OEM SSD in google and it turns out to be known for some issues including high temps and system instability especially in laptops.

42 minutes ago, chaosmarine92 said:

My laptop is randomly rebooting with no apparent cause.

Now for the main issue. If you never cleaned the airways of your laptop, it may be a good time to do so. It may not be the only reason for the crashes but it certainly helps having a good cooling capacity.

If reinstalling Windows was the solution the last time, I believe this may be the solution this time too. If you can get a spare SSD to replace the Samsung boot drive, you can give it a shot. If you can get your hands on a replacement drive at an acceptable price, this is the time to do so. With the price hike, it may be difficult to get SSDs in the near future.

Hope that helps.

 

[chaosmarine92]

8 minutes ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

I searched that OEM SSD in google and it turns out to be known for some issues including high temps and system instability especially in laptops.

Now for the main issue. If you never cleaned the airways of your laptop, it may be a good time to do so. It may not be the only reason for the crashes but it certainly helps having a good cooling capacity.

If reinstalling Windows was the solution the last time, I believe this may be the solution this time too. If you can get a spare SSD to replace the Samsung boot drive, you can give it a shot. If you can get your hands on a replacement drive at an acceptable price, this is the time to do so. With the price hike, it may be difficult to get SSDs in the near future.

Hope that helps.

 

When I installed the second drive I checked for dust but the internals were clean. That was about a month after reinstalling windows. Is there some way to check if the boot drive is the actual issue? I don't want to buy a new drive just to have this happen again in a few months.

[Sawa Takahashi]

24 minutes ago, chaosmarine92 said:

When I installed the second drive I checked for dust but the internals were clean. That was about a month after reinstalling windows. Is there some way to check if the boot drive is the actual issue? I don't want to buy a new drive just to have this happen again in a few months.

If the issue is really the SSD overheating, it's kind of hard to diagnose directly. I know someone who added a heatsink (and a thermal pad) on the SSD to help cooling but not every laptop has room for adding a heatsink.

The problem with reproducing the issue is that it takes a few months before it happens. Just doing a few tests may end up taking a year.

Maybe you can reinstall Windows and if it works correctly you can create a backup of your SSD with an utility like Macrium Reflect. If the issue returns then you restore the image on your SSD.

 

[chaosmarine92]

1 hour ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

If the issue is really the SSD overheating, it's kind of hard to diagnose directly. I know someone who added a heatsink (and a thermal pad) on the SSD to help cooling but not every laptop has room for adding a heatsink.

The problem with reproducing the issue is that it takes a few months before it happens. Just doing a few tests may end up taking a year.

Maybe you can reinstall Windows and if it works correctly you can create a backup of your SSD with an utility like Macrium Reflect. If the issue returns then you restore the image on your SSD.

 

I don't think that overheating is the likely issue. When running games with everything getting hot its fine...usually. When it got really bad last time I would have the laptop off for hours then turn it on and within 5 minutes while doing nothing it was rebooting constantly. Right now what is often happening is when I close the lid and leave for a while I come back and it reboots losing whatever i had open. Or like this morning I turned it on and left it alone for a couple minutes then when i went to use it it rebooted. 

 

Right now I'm leaning towards just buying a new 1TB boot drive and replacing it to see how it goes.

[Sawa Takahashi]

10 hours ago, chaosmarine92 said:

I don't think that overheating is the likely issue.

The thing about overheating SSD controllers is that it is not dependant on usage. It can happen even when idle. But you are right to think this is hard to diagnose in that sense.

10 hours ago, chaosmarine92 said:

Right now I'm leaning towards just buying a new 1TB boot drive and replacing it to see how it goes.

I think it is the best way to go at the moment. If it can help you choose, I had good experiences with Western Digital, Kingston and Lexar SSDs. 

 

[chaosmarine92]

7 hours ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

The thing about overheating SSD controllers is that it is not dependant on usage. It can happen even when idle. But you are right to think this is hard to diagnose in that sense.

I think it is the best way to go at the moment. If it can help you choose, I had good experiences with Western Digital, Kingston and Lexar SSDs. 

 

Thanks for the help with this. Ordering one now.