Computer wizards of Giant Bomb, I could use some help.

As of late my computer has been giving me some odd rebooting issues. I can run games fine, no issue at all. I can do general computing with no issues as well. But god forbid I go to install a program, a driver or a Windows update - my computer shuts down. No message, no error. Just reboots. This will happen randomly as well for no reason, but way less frequently. I pulled up the event log viewer and the most consistent issue seems to be an Kernel-Power Event ID 41. I checked out what MS Support forums had to say:

" An event 41 is used to report that something unexpected happened that prevented Windows from shutting down correctly. There may be insufficient information to explicitly define what happened."

This makes sense, because like I was saying I can re-create the issue 9 times out of 10 when I go to install an update or program, but then other times it happens for no reason. The support forum also said "An underpowered or failing power supply may cause this behavior." So I looked into this a bit, and quite a few places and people are siting the same thing. But my question is why wouldn't it happen when I am running a game? Why only when I go to install certain things? It's got me boggled at this point.

The computer is running cool, I have checked that. RAM seems to be fine as I checked that as well. My assumption is that it is the power supply, but I have no clue. My computer is about 2 years old at this point and the PSU was making some odd humming noises recently so my next step (without giving MS $100 to troubleshoot it in case it is a hardware and not software issue) is to buy a new PSU. Here is my current one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371016 Antec 550W

The rest of my set up is:

Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66Ghz

ASUS P7P55D-E LX LGA 1156

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3

EVGA GeForce GTX 260

Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium SP1

If anyone could offer any help on the issue that would be great. And/or suggestions for a new PSU that would work with my current set up. I was looking at this one, but I didn't know if it was compatible:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341017

Thanks duders

This looks like a query better suited to Tested's forums, but if a solution is provided here then all the more power to that person.

Yea, didn't even think of that, I'll post over there as well. Thanks for the heads up!

Hey buddy,

now, as other people have informed you, it could well be the power supply. What I've found through many years of computing experience however is that 9 times out of 10 it is a software issue. I'd say you'd be far better served doing a nice clean install of Windows and going from there. The hassle is your data, I know, but when you think it through - for me anyway - there isn't a huge amount of stuff that is critical. I have my music and photos backed up to a portable drive. My games, I have a lot installed but if I'm being realistic, I don't need 95 games installed as I'm only actually going to play 5 or so, and they can always be re-installed/downloaded. That's really all I care about. Anything else can be backed up to a little memory stick/drive.

I'd definitely recommend trying to re-install/clean format Windows before shelling out on hardware. Then if the issue still persists, you lost nothing but perhaps half a day and are a little wiser as to the cause. If you buy new hardware and find that it still has a problem, you're money down and then have to do the clean install anyway.

http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/195451-kernel-power-event-41-a.html

Not sure if you've seen that yet, but maybe that will help.

Also, from reading up on things, it seems this is almost always a PSU issue. It's hard to tell why it would only shut down during certain actions, but it's pretty obvious your system is asking the power supply to do something special when installing that is causing it to fail.

That power supply you linked to should work with your setup, and it's probably going to be the best way to know whether that is the easy fix. If you switch it out and it still does it, then it's probably not a hardware problem. Then I would try to reinstall Windows 7 to see if that fixes it.

@Mongoose: So this issue started happening about a year ago, so finally in like June I got tired of it haha and clean installed. Computer ran fine up until about last week, when it started in with the same issues.

@DoctorWelch: Yea like I said, I have been seeing a bunch of other people saying its PSU based, but it's just odd that it does it consistently with some stuff, but not with others haha. I will check out the link though.

Thanks guys

neeevermind