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Overview

If your server is shutting down or rebooting on its own roughly every hour, the cause depends on which operating system you are running.
  • Windows: this is almost always caused by the Windows Server Evaluation Edition license expiring. See Windows below.
  • Linux: this is not expected behavior. See Linux below.

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Windows

Every Windows Server reinstall we provide uses the Evaluation Edition, which is only licensed to run for 180 days. See Windows Server Support for details on eligibility and licensing. Once those 180 days pass without a valid license being applied, Windows enters a state where it automatically initiates a shutdown every hour, along with a notification that the evaluation period has expired. This is expected behavior built into Windows itself, not a fault with your server.

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Confirming This Is the Cause

You can confirm the evaluation has expired by connecting to your server (before it shuts down again) and running the following in an elevated Command Prompt:
This displays the licensing status. Look for a line indicating the license has expired, or that the machine is in “Notification” mode. You can also check eventvwr.msc under Windows Logs > System for EventLog source events around the time of each shutdown, which will reference the evaluation period ending. It may also be visible in the bottom right corner, where it says “Windows License is expired.” License Expired

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Resolving It

You have a few options:
If you have your own Windows Server license, you can apply it with:
This stops the hourly shutdowns immediately, without needing to reinstall.
If you do not have a license yet, you can temporarily extend the evaluation period by running the following in an elevated Command Prompt, then restarting the server:
This grants another 180 days and stops the hourly shutdowns. It can only be done a limited number of times before Windows requires activation regardless, so this is a temporary workaround rather than a permanent fix, and it may not work on all versions of Windows.
Reinstalling Windows Server through the Reinstall tab of the VPS panel starts a fresh 180-day evaluation period. See Server Reinstallation for how to do this. Remember to back up any data first, as reinstalling wipes the server.
If you do not need Windows specifically, reinstalling to a Linux distribution avoids licensing and evaluation limits entirely.
We do not provide Windows Server licenses and cannot extend the evaluation period for you, as this is a restriction set by Microsoft rather than by us.

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Linux

Linux distributions do not have any built-in evaluation period or licensing mechanism that would cause hourly shutdowns or reboots, so this is not expected behavior. This is usually caused by something on the server itself, such as a cron job, a misconfigured watchdog, a kernel panic, or a script left running by a previous action on the server. If you cannot find the cause, please open a ticket with:
  • The output of the commands above, if available.
  • The exact time (and timezone) restarts have occurred.
  • Anything that changed on the server before this started happening.
Our team can also check the hypervisor logs on our end to see whether the shutdown is being triggered from inside the server or from the host.