Random power-off, but only on Vista???

[nukeboyt]

I have an HP Pavilion a6230n desktop computer that I dual boot. XP is on one physical HD, and Vista (the original OS) is on another. I had not used Vista for several years, so I performed a factory reset, re-installing back to out of the box status. The problem is that while running vista, it randomly (& instantly) powers off. No warning, no "shut-down". Just an instant loss of power.

The really odd part is that this NEVER happens when I boot into XP!!!! It can (and does) run for days-on-end on XP.

I thought it could be temperature related and that somehow Vista was causing the CPU to overheat, I cleaned the heatsink and CPU and applied fresh thermal paste. But the problem continues. The fans are all working fine and there is no dust whatsoever inside the machine.

I installed a temperature monitoring program and the CPU core temps (AMD 5000 dual core) were never above 40 C. Usual temperature was around 28 C.

Any thoughts, troubleshooting tips?

 

[hang-the-9]

Check event log for any driver crashes in Vista. If it was a hardware issue, it would be shutting down all the time not just in one OS.

 

[nukeboyt]

More Information:

The problem exists when I load Windows 7 also:. I wiped the factory HD and installed Window 7 from CD. It seemed to be running on, but after performing the Windows Updates (Important only) the problem started all over again.

Back to XP, it runs for days.

I checked the event logs and nothing obvious (or consistent) is being recorded prior to the shutdown.

 

[nukeboyt]

Check event log for any driver crashes in Vista. If it was a hardware issue, it would be shutting down all the time not just in one OS.

Thank you. I cannot find any entries that are similar or consistent prior to the shutdown.

 

[hang-the-9]

You said you have the OS installed in a second hard drive, try a new drive for that. If it runs on XP fine, but a second drive has issues, could be the hard-drive.