Event ID 41 Error & Windows 10 Feature Update 1903

Shortly after I installed the Windows 10 Feature Update 1903 my PC started getting Kernel-Power Event ID 41 errors. This resulted in the PC simply turning off. Not a shutdown, but just a power turn off.

I went through the usual suspects for this error: adjusting the power settings and updating my drivers. Nothing worked. Then I considered that the problem might not have been caused by the update–it might, to use a little causal reasoning, have been mere coincidence rather than causation. Obviously, to simply infer that since the problem arose after the update would be to fall into the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy (to conclude that A must cause B because B occurred after A).

This sort of error is also caused by the failure of a PC’s power supply, so to check this possibility I tested the power supply. Not with the bent paperclip method, but using a proper tester. The supply was fine. On the plus side, I knew it was not an expensive hardware failure. On the minus side, I still had no solution.

Fortunately, all the years of philosophy and tinkering with computers paid off as it always does: I continued to apply the method of difference to test various hypotheses. This method involves comparing cases in which the effect is present with cases in which it is not in order to find the difference that is likely to be the cause.

I noticed that as long as I was actively using the PC, the problem did not occur. But if I was away from the PC, the power would turn off after about 15 minutes. I had checked my power settings–the PC was set to never sleep and I had gone through all the power settings in detail. But I reasoned that something in the update had caused the PC to still try to sleep (or something similar) when it was idle regardless of the setting and this caused the PC to turn off rather than sleep.

I recalled that back when screensavers were a thing, there were utilities that would jiggle the mouse while doing a long PowerPoint presentation to keep that from happening. I found a more recent version of such a utility, the free MouseJiggle I installed it and gave it a try. Problem (sort of) solved. MouseJiggle keeps the PC always active, so it does not trigger whatever causes it to turn off when idle. Another triumph for causal reasoning: going idle causes the PC to turn off, preventing it from ever idling was the workaround solution.