Help with crashing PC

Playground Hardware
#1

I decided to set-up Channels DVR using an old PC. It's a HP 8200 Elite Ultra Slim with i3 processor, 4 GB ram, newly-installed 2 TB fusion drive. The only software installed are vanilla Windows 10 Pro and Channels.

However PC is crashing periodically. Sometimes within 24 hours after a restart. Sometimes it will run fine for 3-4 days. Tried looking in the windows system logs and don't see any indication of what caused the crash. It isn't connected to a display 24/7, so I can't tell if there's a BSOD. The power remains on, but my Channels apps (Apple TV, iOS) cannot find the DVR and connecting mouse, keyboard and monitor to the machine yields no response at all. But a restart always gets it going again. I tried rolling back some drivers to Windows 8 and that didn't eliminate the problems.

I have a very similar PC running elsewhere in the house. Same model with i5 processor, 8 GB ram, Win10. It's proven to be very reliable. Daughter uses it for light gaming (like Sims 4) and there are no reports of crashes or other bad behavior.

I know i3, 4GB isn't very beefy by today's standards, but it meets minimum requirements and Channels works just fine when the machine is functional.

Any tips for things I can review in either Windows or Channels that might shed some light on the problem? Thx.

#2

What does the dvr log show?

#3

Not sure there's anything revealing there. Here are last few events before the normal startup occurred at 9:26am after I discovered it was down:

2019/12/18 00:33:15 [SYS] Removing old backup backup-20191123.232729
2019/12/18 01:29:21 [NAT] Successfully mapped port 8089 using natpmp
2019/12/18 02:29:21 [NAT] Successfully mapped port 8089 using natpmp
2019/12/18 03:29:21 [NAT] Successfully mapped port 8089 using natpmp
2019/12/18 04:28:13 [CACHE] Deleted cache for already deleted file 984
2019/12/18 04:29:21 [NAT] Successfully mapped port 8089 using natpmp
2019/12/18 05:29:21 [NAT] Successfully mapped port 8089 using natpmp
2019/12/18 06:29:21 [NAT] Successfully mapped port 8089 using natpmp

#4

I would recommend running a RAM test as the first step: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-detect-bad-ram-with-the-windows-memory-diagnostic-tool/

#5

Will-do. Thanks!

#6

You could try booting up a Linux Live OS and letting it run for awhile to see if it still periodically crashes. If it still crahes from time to time, then there's a hardware cause. If it doesn't, then it's a problem with Windows.

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