41 Kernel Power System

Question

When I play Fortnite for around >30 minutes my PC completely seizes and freezes not letting me do anything. It then goes into an infininte restart loop and doesn't let me sign in until I shut the power supply off and wait several seconds. This only happens with Fortnite no other games I play. My specs of my pc are fine I have a 5070, Ryzen 5 5600x, 32gb ram, and a 850psu

Answer 1

Hi. I'm David, and I'm happy to help you.

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The Kernel-Power 41 error merely indicates that the system crashed or shut down unexpectedly, but it does not reveal the cause on its own. It is necessary to investigate further.

Please export and share the log for analysis:

1. Press Windows + X and select Event Viewer;
2. Expand Windows Logs and select System;
3. In the Actions panel on the right, select Filter Current Log;
4. In Event level, check the boxes Critical, Warning, and Error and click on Ok;
5. Again, in the Actions panel, select Save Filtered Log File As and save in an easily accessible place.

Then, upload the file to the cloud (OneDrive), choose to share it, and get the link.

Post the link to the file here so I can have a look.

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Looking forward to your reply.

Answer 2

Event ID 41 means Windows detected an unexpected shutdown or restart. By itself, it does not identify the exact cause.

Because the PC freezes first, then restarts, and Fortnite is the trigger, this matches the scenario where the system becomes unresponsive or restarts unexpectedly and Event ID 41 may show zero values or limited detail. In that case, the documented starting point is to check for hardware or low-level stability issues.

Recommended checks:

1. In Event Viewer, check whether Event ID 41 includes BugcheckCode or whether the values are all 0.
   • If the values are all 0, Windows may not have been able to write the crash details before the restart.
2. Check for Event ID 46 from volmgr around the same time.
   • If present, review the pagefile configuration, because the system may have failed to initialize crash dump writing.
3. Check for events just before the unexpected shutdown time.
   • Look in System and Application logs for errors before Event ID 6008.
   • Event ID 6008 indicates the previous shutdown was unexpected.
4. Disable any overclocking.
   • If CPU, GPU, or memory overclocking is enabled, return the system to default speeds and test again.
5. Check memory health and configuration.
   • Verify the RAM is healthy, correctly seated, and running at the intended configuration.
   • The guidance specifically calls out checking that all memory chips run at the same speed and are configured correctly.
6. Check the power supply path.
   • Event ID 41 with freezes or missing bugcheck data can indicate a power problem.
   • Even with an 850W PSU, the issue can still be power-related if the PSU is faulty or cannot provide stable power under load.
7. Check for overheating.
   • Inspect system temperatures and look for any component overheating during gameplay.
8. Set the system back to default configuration and retest.
   • If custom BIOS tuning, EXPO/XMP, undervolting, or similar changes are in place, revert to defaults and verify whether the issue still occurs.
9. If a blue screen appears but Event ID 41 does not capture the bugcheck code, turn off automatic restart so the stop code can be seen.
   • Go to My Computer/Properties > Advanced system settings > Advanced.
   • Under Startup and Recovery, select Settings.
   • Clear Automatically restart.

What the symptoms suggest:

• A freeze followed by restart loop is consistent with the documented “unresponsive or randomly restarts” Event ID 41 scenario.
• The most likely areas to isolate first are power, memory, overheating, and system stability settings.
• Since it happens only in Fortnite, that points to a workload-specific trigger, but Event ID 41 itself still indicates the shutdown was not clean rather than identifying Fortnite as the root cause.

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• Advanced troubleshooting for Event ID 41: "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first"
• Advanced troubleshooting for Event ID 41: "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first"
• Advanced troubleshooting for Event ID 41: "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first"
• Advanced troubleshooting for Event ID 41: "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first"
• Troubleshooting Windows unexpected restarts and stop code errors