Who? Me, it seems.
After 25 years of computers, and being the one in the area most people come to when they have a problem, one of my regular help freeloaders presented me with her Vista based laptop on Thursday, which was blue screening at boot.
I brought it home, did a bit of research which suggested bootblock viruses, SATA controller problems after an update, and half a dozen different problems. After trying various repair methods unsuccessfully, I decided I would have to re-install, and asked her to let me have the locations of all files she wanted saving (the plan was to boot a Linux live CD and rescue the files from there first.
Now - remember, this is after 25 years of fixing PCs. So why didn't I think of trying "Last Known Good Configuration" three days ago? A quick F8 arrow down and enter has brought the system back up in 2 minutes.
Definitely one of those "Doh!" moments.
Steve
I suspect we've all been there, Steve. The trick is not to tell the punter. ;D
You are not alone Steve ............... ::)
Vista was loading OK - desktop and startup progs OK - several minutes into doing (random) things, it blue-screened and re-booted. Once re-started it didn't crash again that session.
I won't bore everyone telling you that I tried everything!, including your saviour Steve. Even tried the Windows Vista CD. Every test I tried said "all was OK - no problems".
After several days tearing my hair out, I cleared the hard-drive and did a clean install of Vista.
Several minutes after downloading 58 updates ............ it blue screened etc!!
When it re-started I decided to leave it for another day.
But before doing so I decided to load an older display driver, as I hadn't been happy with one MS had updated me to (My X800 graphic card not up to it?).
I have had no blue screen etc since!!!!!!!!!!!
Mo.
:react: :hairpull:
A colleague at work has asked me to look at his PC which exhibits the same fault, it starts to load Windows XP but then gives a blue screen. I did in fact try 'last known good' but this failed to resolve it. adly it appears to be a fauly hard drive but the built in diagnostics and maintenance haven't been able to repair it. It also refuses to boot from the CD-ROM drive with a Windows XP disk.
John, see what memory strips there are - take them out, and replace one at a time, re-booting after each one if it's OK.
Mo.
;)
John
The most common method I came across in my research was to set SATA to ATA in the BIOS. It seems to have cured a lot. (Although this is only relevant on a fairly recent laptop - it shouldn't affect desktops or IDE only machines).
You'll need to disable the flash buffer, but the BIOS setup should point you in the right direction.
Steve
Thanks for the advice guys. The machine is a Dell desktop, I'm told about 10 years old.
I'll try it again when I've got time but I've been ito the Bios and it allows me to select the CD-ROM as the first device to boot from but it doesn't recognize the Windows XP disk as an Operating system.
Quote from: john on Aug 17, 2008, 01:40:49
Thanks for the advice guys. The machine is a Dell desktop, I'm told about 10 years old.
I'll try it again when I've got time but I've been ito the Bios and it allows me to select the CD-ROM as the first device to boot from but it doesn't recognize the Windows XP disk as an Operating system.
Take out the memory strips, and replace one at a time, and retry after each one, till you find the duff one!
Mo
;)