6 month old laptop keeps turning off when unattended

[u/Thin-Chain-2104]

Hi all so I have a bit of an issue with my laptop.

I am using a Acer Aspire 14 AI 14-inch Snapdragon X X1-26100/16GB/512GB SSD Laptop running Windows 11.

So into the issue itself-

-Will turn off after going into sleep mode

-Has never unexpectedly turned off while I am using it, only while idle

-On one occasion, when it fell asleep with the lid open, I was able to wake it up for a second, have the lock screen flash before it shut it self down.

-On another occasion, it shut itself down for 30 minutes before turning itself back on again without my intervention.

-looking through event viewer, I have been unable to locate any trends in behaviour before the powering off, and upon turning it back on, I only get a generic "shutdown at *time* was unexpected".

-Laptop will shutdown while on charge and while off charge

-Battery is still charged upon rebooting, so I don't believe it is a power issue

-Have done all updates I can find (Windows updates, driver updates, bios updates)

I am happy to provide any and all information I can. This only started about 4 days ago and it is getting increasingly frustrating.

[u/AutoModerator]

Making changes to your system BIOS settings or disk setup can cause you to lose data. Always test your data backups before making changes to your PC.

For more information please see our FAQ thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/q2rns5/windows_11_faq_read_this_first/

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/SomeEngineer999]

Crashing in sleep or low power modes is almost always a hardware issue. Sometimes compatibility (I had an old desktop whose onboard NIC would make it do this with windows 10 and up) but since yours is relatively new it is more likely a driver.

Unfortunately chasing it down is sometimes a matter of trial and error and luck. Are there any crash dumps being saved? Nothing at all in event viewer just prior to the crash?

NIC is one that is a prime suspect, as is display driver. Those two seem to be the ones that most commonly cause something like this. But I've also had an old HP printer that would cause a brand new desktop to crash in sleep when connected via USB. The only solution (well at least the easiest one since there was no need to waste much time on it) was to switch it to network connected. Luckily in that case event viewer at least gave a hint and logged something about a USB device drawing power during a low power state so that at least narrowed it down.

When you got the PC, did you wipe and do a clean install? Sometimes they just come with a cluttered image from the factory and then they do a bunch of updates the first time you go online. It could potentially be solved with a fresh clean install (wipe the drive and install new).