I've been fighting with this problem for the last 3 weeks where my machine will just instantly reboot. No BSOD, and when i checked the event log all that was reported was the generic "Kernal-power" error with the detailed information pointing to a hard crash.
This is a machine that was working for 18 months before these crashes started happening. When they started happening is after I added 3 HDs in a RAID-5, upped the memory to 12gb, moved to a new house, added a SSD and added about 5 case fans.
I have thus eliminated the RAID, and determined that the SSD was not the cause (because it was still crashing even though the ssd wasn't connected).
I've run memtest several times over night with no memory problems showing up.
I've run IntelBurnTest to max out the cpu to see if it was a heat issue and at full tilt after 20 min it was only at 85C and the machine didn't crash. I also took a look at the voltages during this test, with a screenshot at the bottom of this post
I've ruled out a software issue by reinstalling windows 7 ultimate x64 a total of 5 times, but even during that the install it crashes. Happens sometime during file copying at the beginning, or during uncompressing files, or sometimes during running windows update.
The only discernible pattern i can see is that it seems to crash when hard disks might be spinning up or when they are accessed heavily from large file transfers.
My current guess is that it is probably an issue with the MB, PSU or the power coming through the outlet.
Any suggestions of what i could try to troubleshoot or what may be wrong?
Specs PSU: Seasonic M12 700w Mem: 12gb CPU: i7-920 with stock heatsink MB: Asus P6T HDs: 3 green WD and 1 Corsair force 3 120b with 1.3.3 firmware
UPDATE: I've reseated everything save the cpu on my motherboard and replugged in everything as well. Now my machine can only cold boot, when it does boot. Other times it just sits here with power and doesn't even POST or do the little beep right before it POSTS. And twice it just sat there continuously beeping at me. Unfortunately my asus manual has nothing to saying about what the beeping could mean.
Also on two occasions when it did crash, it wiped the settings in the BIOS.
I'm really starting to wonder if something is just busted on the mb.
Here is the event data from the event log though from what i've found it seems having all zeros means windows doesn't know why it crashed.
EventData
BugcheckCode 0 BugcheckParameter1 0x0 BugcheckParameter2 0x0 BugcheckParameter3 0x0 BugcheckParameter4 0x0 SleepInProgress false PowerButtonTimestamp 0
UPDATE 2: I ran memtest multiple times with no problems whatsoever. Regardless I decided to remove the most recent additional memory I put in and now no more cold boot issues, computer is FASTER than before AND going on 3 days with only one reboot. Which makes me think it is a motherboard issue, and might be a northbridge controller overheating (though I don't know why it would do that).
Also, when it was rebooting constantly, I noticed that it was always the same HD that had a "Write error" in SMART. So that drive is also suspect. I think I have/had mulitple issues which is making this so hard to diagnose.
Running full tilt voltages
Idling Voltages
Update 3:
So I've replaced the PSU, GPU and now the MB and the machine still crashes. So i popped out all but 1 memory module and it continued to crash, but then I found that it continuously crashed on 3 of the 6 memory modules that I had. So even though Memtest wasn't reporting any problems, it turns out there was some problems with my memory...
Geuss the moreal of the story is to trust the old school hardware checks and to take software checks with a grain of salt.