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This seems to be a popular problem for Asus users. However, I have not found a definite cause or solution for the problem.

This machine is roughly four years of age now, and was recently given to me in October of 2014. I had cleared everything off it, performing a clean installation of windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bit edition. A few days later I noticed that it had restarted. At first I didn't think anything of it. But a few hours later, It happened again. I took notice that there was no BSOD. It just did a hard reboot. As if it lost power... Skipping ahead, dealing with the issue for a few months Waiting for replies on a now closed MS thread, I update to windows 8.1 in January. All was well until February 9th. 2015, A bit less than 20 days after the update. Then one on the 20th. Another on the 17th, and THREE today. Latest one over an hour ago (7:29 PM EDT)...

The other two reboots were within half an hour of eachother!!!

Now, Because of the amount of reboots in a single day, I am noticing a slight pattern here. It is most likely to happen under these conditions.

  1. The event has only happened while sitting idle OR Doing something minor such as typing or playing my virtual Keyboard.
  2. Only while connected to a network using the built in Intel WLAN device (Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030). Ruled out due to the fact it has done this even with network device disabled/disconnected.
  3. Only when the laptop is AWAKE.

I want to know the following

  • Is there anything I can do for a four year old machine that is no longer covered by a warranty, For Free, or really cheap?

    Side note: I am genuinely worried about my hard disk being trashed by the constant rebooting that I may experience. I mean, it is one thing for a random reboot once and a while but TWO within FIVE MINUTES!? You guys can understand why that worries me right? My entire life is on this laptop. If it causes my files to become corrupt, it would be the end of RMSoftware Development as I know it... I need to start backing my stuff up even more so now...

Additional Information:

  • No BSOD means I do not blue screen, thus there are no crash dumps or any error reports.

  • As of 3/22/2015: I updated to BIOS Revision 213 via Asus Tech Support. This (Not supprisingly) Did not fix the issue.

  • I Disabled UEFI Booting - No effect

  • I Disabled Intel Anti-Theft (A feature I had no Idea existed on this). No effect.

  • Disabled Asus FancyStart - No effect

  • Uninstalling ATKPackage by ASUS - NO EFFECT.

  • Uninstalling VMWare Workstation - NO EFFECT

  • Updating Intel wireless drivers - Shockingly (genuine shock) NO EFFECT

  • After a crash a few days ago, I removed the battery in frustration. Kept the laptop off for a while, put it all back, and let it run. No problems for now. Thank you @Sharain for that suggestion.

  • Two days of stability now gone: I Was leaving my computer idle while using it as a wireless hotspot. while also connected to a WiFi network (Sharing a VPN connection with my phone) and it restarted. Which again brings me to the question: IS IT MY WIRELESS CARD? IS IT FAILING? (Mentioned above). No I am not always using the hotspot feature, however I am Always connected to some network when it does the shut down. I should note that Lately I notice that when I disconnect from a network, I have to disable and re-enable the card from device manager to get it to reconnect. is this related?

  • two reboots within 5 minutes I was not connected to any network. I went ahead and disabled my wireless adapter following this event. Waiting for any changes...

  • 12 hours nothing.... until now... So I have officially ruled out the wireless adapter. I had disabled it via device manager... shockingly (again legit shock....) it had NO EFFECT. IT IS AT THIS POINT, I AM OUT OF THINGS TO TRY. is this mobo related? Is there a free fix? Is there something I can do?

  • I have been keeping it closed at night and have not had any issues for nearly a week. However I am noticing that my battery no longer warns me if it is low. The main issue now is the battery is a bit under 30 percent when my laptop shuts off. Is my motherboard not getting enough voltage?

Thanks again to everyone who is willing to assist in any way possible, and As always, I hope you enjoy reading my life story of a question.

Latest update: I notice this generally happens during cooler weather. and because I have seen several other users with similar problems (around the same time) and the fact that I have had only one or two crashes the past four months (when it was kind of cool outside). If you guys have any additional theories, feel free to enlighten me. Thank you all for the suggestions thus far.

Special notice: I will continue to update this question as needed, new information will be in bold type.

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    do you have any particular errors in your system event log that you can share? As well, have you looked in the .dmp files that are created by default if you haven't changed the pagefile location?
    – Citizen
    Mar 19, 2015 at 2:37
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    @Citizen, Sorry I do not have anything in that. As stated above, I do not have any blue screen. No crash dumps or other logs are present. The only thing I see is a CRITICAL event log entry saying the system restarted without cleanly shutting down first. No other details. Mar 19, 2015 at 14:30
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    Have you attempted to look in the powersettings and see if all auto-shutdown settings are off? Also, try to pull out the battery and JUST keep the charger in, see if that gives any effect.
    – Sharain
    Mar 24, 2015 at 12:23
  • @Sharain Thank you I will try the battery. About the auto-shutdown settings, There are none that I see, and even so, These are random hard resets/shutdowns. There is no real pattern that I can yet see. Mar 24, 2015 at 15:29
  • You say it happens when the laptop is idle, that, from my perspective, hints towards such settings.
    – Sharain
    Mar 24, 2015 at 22:08

4 Answers 4

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From your symptoms it might seem that dust have accumulated on the cooler. My advice's:

  1. If your technical skills are not too great, ask at a service to clean the dust out of the laptop's cooler.
  2. If you are technically skilled: Look for the service manual for your laptop. Open the laptop according to manual indications. Clean out any dust accumulation from the cooler and the cooler fan. Assemble the laptop back. Now, when started, the laptop shall behave better. The restart is due to CPU reaching a high temperature. When specific temperature threshold is reached (~80 degrees Celsius) from the BIOS the laptop is commanded to shut down.
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  • Unfourtanatly I already did that. This isn't the issue. And i have also ran cpu temperature monitoring utilities. The issue takes place during LOW TEMPERATURE and idle cpu usage periods. Jan 5, 2016 at 21:11
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I have a U56E and took the laptop apart enough to get under the top panel. I blew a ton of crap -- dust and other debris -- out of there, and voila! No more rebooting. Seems to me it was overheating as some have suggested. My machine was four years old before this auto-rebooting occurred. (My bios was up-to-date -- I checked before taking the system apart.)

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Try disabling auto reboot on crash. It may be blue screening, but it goes by so fast when this is turned on it may not even have time to start dumping memory.

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I think I can officially say I have my answer to the question. After further investigation, I noticed one of the parts on the motherboard were crooked. I found this last year but I can finally post what it looks like. I have since gotten much newer computer(s). This just serves as a possible answer for others who have this laptop, and suffer from this kind of defect.enter image description here

This part is obviously very crooked, and as a result, a probably microscopic gap is present in the contact points highlighted. this could be why the power would cut. I do not know if ASUS hand-soldered/placed the PCB parts, but this one was clearly not correct.

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