Sudden Chronic Shutdowns

[DoctorSaticoy]

After I installed KSP 1.02, I began experiencing sudden complete system shutdowns. These events aren't crashes in the standard sense; there's no lockup, slowdown, freeze, or BSOD. I'll be happily playing, when suddenly my screen goes black and my computer powers down. When I press the power button to reboot, Windows launches normally; it doesn't realize anything untoward happened. There's no "Windows didn't shut down properly" message. It's as if something is just telling it to shut down, out of the blue, no explanation. If it were a hardware issue, I would expect Windows to at least sense the presence of an issue; here, there's nothing.

I went through a lot of steps to pin down the source of the issue, and it's KSP. I even completely re-installed Windows, then installed all my other games one by one. Everything is perfect until I add KSP. Unfortunately, when the issue begins, it affects all my software, even Chrome. I must re-install Windows in order to fix it.

I thought the issue was a compatibility one. I went through all the standard troubleshooting procedures, including setting KSP to run on a single core, but nothing worked.

My machine isn't top-end, but it's well within the recommended specs and should be beefy enough to play KSP without struggling. I've never had it display any issues with any other game before. Here's what I have:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core 3.60 GHz

8 GB RAM

AMD Radeon HD 6800

Here's a link to the last KSP file I could find.

I love this game so much I've been playing it with really crappy graphics on an old iMac, but that's reached the limit of its capabilities. I'm just to the point where I'm exploring beyond Minmus, and I don't want to give it up. Can anyone help?

[SAI Peregrinus]

Check your windows system event logs after a shutdown to see what caused the shutdown, if possible. Fri, May 08, 2015 17:17:00 is the end of that KSP log, so look about that time in the Event Viewer. Look for any errors/warnings.

[DoctorSaticoy]

Thanks for the reply. I couldn't find any old event logs, so I re-created the situation. Here's what happened:

I re-loaded KSP and played it until I got a shutdown. I went into the Event Viewer and looked at "Administrative Events." The crash happened at around 2:20 p.m. In the Viewer, there's an event at 12:27 p.m., then one at 2:23 p.m. The one just after the crash says "The previous system shutdown at 2:21:38 PM on ‎5/‎25/‎2015 was unexpected." For almost two hours before that, there are no events of any kind listed.

Here is the KSP file from that shutdown.

Right before it happened, I switched focus from my orbiter to my lander. The last event in that KSP log reflects that; there's no event listed after it.

Still no clue what's happening.

[sal_vager]

This sounds like your computer is overheating, your motherboard will automatically shut down the PC if it detects dangerous levels of heat, this is at the BIOS/UEFI level, above the OS.

Make sure all fans are clean and turning freely, and that no cables are able to move into the fan blades, they can often move when they themselves get hot, also ensure all vents into and out of your case are not blocked.