SP2017 unexpected shutdowns almost every night this week?

[Milka]

Hi all,

My SP2017 has been rock solid for ages, but the last week has been a joke. Every night bar 1 it has had an unexpected shutdown. Event viewer says it's entering connected standby, but then the next morning there's an Error saying "previous system shutdown at hhmmss was unexpected".

Each day I'm getting a Critical Kernal Power event (Event 41) in the morning when I restart it.

Have run the Surface Diagnostic Tool and that found nothing.

Any tips on what to check next? I've got all the latest updates except for 1809.

Cheers,
milka

 

[Milka]

No one else getting this? Have reset to defaults in powercfg as well... nothing...

Any other tips? Literally the worst possible timing for me to try a reset, so really hoping to avoid it...

 

[sharpuser]

Here’s a tip - Become a Windows Insider and install the latest version. Solid.

 

[sharpuser]

If you have a different power supply, try that one. You may be getting a voltage spike from the “brick” either up or down. This can happen when the power supply is aging, especially by heat. The SP protects itself (especially the charging circuit) by shutting down.

That said, I know a Surface Book user that had the error occur, and discovered it to be when the SD card was set up as the backup drive. Changing backup drive to somewhere else apparently fixed the problem.

 

[Milka]

The unexpected shutdowns are occurring when the SP is on battery power, not on power supply.
powercfg report is showing it enters connected standby, but is then going to "suspended" some time after. Next morning, instead of waking from connected standby with my previous state, it's a clean slate...

 

[sharpuser]

Uh oh. Seems your battery may be failing. How does it hold a charge?

 

[Milka]

Everything I've seen through using it on battery and via powercfg says the battery is fine. No sudden resets when in use. Battery report is healthy...

 

[sharpuser]

Everything I've seen through using it on battery and via powercfg says the battery is fine. No sudden resets when in use. Battery report is healthy...

Okay. You are headed for a Reset, my friend, to rule out a settings issue, though that would not rule out a driver problem.

 

[Milka]

yeah, looking that way. unfortunate MS don't provide some more useful tools to diagnose issues like this...

 

[Milka]

For anyone else that was having issues like this, 1809 appears to have fixed them for me. Weirdly, it wasn't just unexpected shutdowns, it 1803 was actually ignoring all of the power plan settings. Have found other reports online of similar behaviour from 1803.