Troubleshooting 41 Kernel Power Error - where to start?

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Halo Diehards

Halo Diehards

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Jan 17, 2014
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I have no idea why this is happening. It's on a fairly new build. Everything has been running fine for months. Then a couple weeks ago I started noticing my computer making me log in when I hopped on. It wasn't until a couple days ago I checked my preferences and saw it's only supposed to do that when I boot Windows, and realized it was restarting.

I can't restore for reasons I won't get into (will remedy that now for future issues). What I'm hoping for are tests I can run to try and track down the issue. I've looked in my Event Viewer, and other errors don't seem to coincide, but I'm not really familiar with making my way around it. I'm running SiSoftware on it now to see if anything comes up on that. In searches I've read everything from the power supply to the hard drive to bad drivers can cause it. I'd like to have a place to start and just work down a list of tests and things to try.

The OS is Windows 7 Professional
 
Solution
hang-the-9


You can't select best answer for your own post. I did say it could be the power supply in my first reply though :) You just needed to test things a bit.
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
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You already did the research to work on it, power supply, drivers, not likely the hard drive though. Need more details about exactly what is happening, you said the system was restarting, when is it restarting? During gaming? Randomly? Need full system specs also, motherboard, CPU, RAM, power supply brand and model, when did the issue start, did anything change before it started rebooting?
 
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Halo Diehards

Halo Diehards

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Jan 17, 2014
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Usually the restarts seemed totally random. Occasionally it would happen when I touched the mouse, or even a few seconds later, after I had opened a browser and went to a website (always Hulu, though, no other sites, but before I would try to play a video) Quite often the times would coincide around the time I had a task set in Task Manager to sync files with an external. Trying different mouse, unplugging external, and disabling task didn't change issue. Some days it wouldn't do it, sometimes for days at a time, and other days it would happen repeatedly, approximately every hour for a few hours. I couldn't find a pattern, but I never learned how to read error logs properly. I had tried to install windbg to learn how to debug (article online was "How to Solve Windows 7 Crashes in Minutes"), but all the links/info in my researches didn't coincide, got really confusing. Installed Visual Studio Community but couldn't find windbg on it. Tried to install SDK and it resulted in a Vet 4 error, which research showed I could delete/alter code in my computer to get it to work, but I wasn't going to touch that with a ten-foot pole, so I bailed on all of that.

Unfortunately, whatever has caused it has now resulted in completely rendering my pc unusable: it gets stuck in a restarting loop and never progresses past the hit F2 to enter bios screen, but it won't enter bios, just keep restarting. I've started a new thread for that here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2871130/loop-restarting-start.html but I still think it would be good if people had a list of things they could check off when trying to troubleshoot a pesky 41 Kernel error.

PC Specs:

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Processor: AMD FX 6300 Six Core 3.50 Ghz
16 GB RAM
HDD: Seagate 3.5 Barracuda 2TB Serial ATA
Motherboard: ASUS M5A99X EVO R2.0
PSU: 850w

 
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Halo Diehards

Halo Diehards

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Jan 17, 2014
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I found a "real" sticky where I wrote down the one time I saw the critical error in Event Viewer and it wasn't all zeroes:

Kernel 41
Bugcheck Code 159
BugcheckParameter1 0x4
BugcheckParameter2 0x258
BugcheckParameter3 0xfffffa800c868040
BugcheckParameter4 0xfffff8000069a3d0
SleepInProgress true
PowerButtonTimeStamp 0
 
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Halo Diehards

Halo Diehards

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Jan 17, 2014
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Ok, thanks. Is it possible for the power supply or RAM stick failing to cause my pc to go into the restart loop at "Press F2 to enter bios" stage?
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
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Yes, also the crashes could have damaged other things like the hard-drive where it no longer detects the boot sector and can't boot Windows.
 
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Halo Diehards

Halo Diehards

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Jan 17, 2014
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Ok, more research has brought me to checking the CPU thermal paste, and sure enough, the CPU was stuck to the heatsink. I've removed it (wasn't easy) and ordered some thermal paste (none available in my area) but wanted to know if this could cause the problem? Also, if it did cause the problem, is my CPU fried, or not necessarily?
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
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CPU issues can cause a lot of odd things to happen, as can overheating, if the CPU overheated it could cause the system to restart. It's too early to tell if the CPU is damaged, need to clean it up and install the heatsink with new heat grease and see how the system runs.
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
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What do you mean on the other channel? Different connection on same card or onboard video? If it's on the same card, the DVI port may be bad.
 
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Halo Diehards

Halo Diehards

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Jan 17, 2014
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What I meant by "the other channel" was as I put in the parenthesis: DVI vs D-SUB. Wasn't sure how to word it. That monitor has two inputs for the two different monitor cables, and I had tried both of them with the different cables hooked to my computer.

This issue turned out to be a failed psu! Psu appeared to be fine with tests, until I brought it in to a shop and they hooked a thingy to it. I forgot to come back and mark it solved. I would like to mark this solved but see no way to do it with my own reply!
 
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hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
60,387
1,081
152,940


You can't select best answer for your own post. I did say it could be the power supply in my first reply though :) You just needed to test things a bit.
 
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