Event log

Not sure if this is the right forum. My computer seems to blink out when I leave it alone for awhile. When I turn it back on, it indicates it wasn't shut down correctly by taking me to the menu choice for Safe Mode, etc. I don't know if this is a Win7 setting or if something else is going on. It also blinks out sometimes in the middle of a chat conversation.

Recently I've been getting a repetitive error in the Event logs, mostly warning or error, but one time Critical. The one Critical entry was for kernel-power. The repetition looks like this:

Warning Kernel Tm 12:42:42
Error atikmdag 12:27:50
Error atikmdag 12:27:50
Error Kernel-Processor-Power 12:27:42

What I'm finding notable about the sequence of these four entries is the times. The seconds are 42 / 50 / 50 / 42

The time before this was as follows:

09:26:26
09:11:33
09:11:33
09:11:26

In this case, the time of the seconds is 26 / 33 / 33 / 26

I checked the event log and once in awhile the atikmdag error came up when I first installed the Win7 OS, but it's coming up more and more often.

Thanks for any thoughts on these entries. Since they keep repeating in regular intervals, I'm thinking they go together.

 

Explain exactly what you mean by blink out. Does it shut off, reboot, freeze, screen turn black then come back on or something else.

 

The computer simply turns off. Black. Dead. It doesn't shutdown with the usual delay while it gets everything in order. I think it's the same as what it would do if I simply pulled the plug rather then holding the button in or clicking on shutdown.

 

atikmdag has to do with your video card. Is this an installed card on an onboard chip? Check the driver.

From my searching the kernel-processor-power error
means you have speedsetp and/or CxE disabled in the bios.

 

hi plodr,
Thanks for this information. I don't think I've ever put in a video card with this computer and when I looked inside, there isn't anything plugged into the slots on the mother board where it would have been installed. Therefore, I believe it is part of the board.

I didn't know what speedstep and CxE are and couldn't find them in the BIOS, but when I googled them, they seem to have to do with overclocking. I've never done anything with overclocking because I don't need the extra performance.

I would like to look into the aktimdag more. I'm wondering if it might be a driver problem with the graphics card.

 

It definitely does not automatically mean that. A lot of BIOSes don't even give you an option to disable speedstep(which is actually called turbo boost now) or modify sleep states and you will see this error in the event viewer.


It is more commonly caused by a driver that doesn't let the machine sleep, idle to a lower cpu speed, or hibernate.

 

I'm trying to figure out why my computer shuts off in the middle of stuff without any warning and without a normal shutdown. The electricity shuts off, no warning, no boot down.

Since this happens sometimes when I'm using a webcam in combination with a chat client, youtube and/or skype, a driver issue seems possible. It also happens when I leave the computer alone too long. I come back to the computer and it's black and no power. This could be some issue relating to sleep or hibernate, but then I would expect it to boot back up without sending me into the menu for safe mode.

I left it for a couple of hours yesterday with a long youtube running and it didn't turn off, making me think that some of the problem is that it needs activity, but if it were going to shut down on its own, I would expect it to power down in a normal way.

I checked the cpu temp and it seems to be okay. It usually runs around 48°C but have seen it as high as 57°C.

 

didn't get my edit in before the time limit. Here was the new thought:

My son thinks it could be going into hibernation and he reset the energy saving mode to "never". I will retest this theory by resetting it to some short time and see if it shuts down. I may be part of the problem if it's going into hibernatino, because when the computer turns off, I simply turn off the power cable, rather than hitting the on switch to see if it will come back up. I haven't ever used hibernate before, so I didn't know how it worked. I'll let you know if this is solves one of the shut down problems.

 

I seem to have made some progress. It's been awhile since the computer simply blinked out (shut off without proper shutdown procedure and without restarting). I think one cause was the energy-saving settings. Since I started playing with this, I first got a hibernation which it could never restart from (always had to allow it to delete anything on the ram). I then reset it for no hibernation and a longer time before shutdown. So whatever was causing the computer to shutdown when I left it inactive, that has stopped.

The other problem which may be causing the comp to blink out seems to be related to the microsoft webcam. That seems to occur when I have the webcam running and then use a specific youtube video. It has the feeling about it that the computer has bitten into something that tasted bad and simply kills itself. This makes me think that this part of the error is related to a driver or software conflict. Since the computer does not automatically do a new startup when it blinks out, I want to also continue looking into the event errors.

For the Kernal Processor Power failure I followed instructions to force an error report before restarting. Those instructions are posted at a microsoft win 7 forum:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...uts-down/bb19c619-b3ec-4826-8ac1-195ecec0bb99

What's described in that post sounds similar to what's happening with my comp, even though that involves a game.

Sorry for my slowness. Thanks for all the help.