Need PC help - spontaneously powers down

[Malice4you 627]

I just can't recall ever having seen a bios screen say anything about a change in memory before, but i also never buy prebuilt systems, so I suppose it might be an HP "convenience" feature for people who bought memory upgrades or went in for service. Thats the only reason I asked.

I have changed enough hardware on a system in a short period that windows itself wanted to re-up its activation, which I might have expected here. I think something like video card upgrade, additional ram, and an extra hdd were enough changes that windows thought it was a different system, though that was back in days of xp. I dunno if newer a newer OS is smarter.

[Scorpio64 5,191]

1 hour ago, Malice4you said:

I just can't recall ever having seen a bios screen say anything about a change in memory before, but i also never buy prebuilt systems,

The BIOS detects memory size every time the system boots up cold.  The first time a  system is booted with new or changed memory, it is detected, then stored in the BIOS so it does not have to do a full detection (to determine memory size) every time the system boots up.  Whether this is displayed, and how it is displayed, on boot up varies by BIOS and is configurable so that you may never see it or see it every time the system boots up.

This is also a helpful diagnostic feature because if a stick goes bad, the system will ignore the bad stick and still boot up with reduced memory.  So, if all of the sudden your system says the memory size changed and you didn't add or remove memory, you probably have a bad stick.

[DirtyDigz 1,815]

5 days of uptime now.  I'm going to call the problem fixed, despite all your efforts to lead me down blind alleys (just kidding, I really appreciate all the replies and advice).

Only issue is that Windows 10 has now realized that something is different in the hardware with the new motherboard and wants me to activate it again - hopefully that's just an administrative thing with Microsoft, but I don't have experience doing that before.  Is it a hassle?

[Malice4you 627]

From memory (XP days), you allow it to reactivate and no problems - took all of a minute if that.  As long as you still have other hardware you had in the system when it was originally activated, you *should* be fine.  I think they look for things like MAC address, HDD serial #, and various other hardware attributes.

In theory, IF it gives you problems, can always call and explain the manufacturer sent you a replacement motherboard, and you may have to read a super long string of characters over the phone, but even that was only a ~10 minute max process when I have had to do something like that.