Amateur

D-Dan · Aug 16, 2008, 14:48:51

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

Rik · Aug 16, 2008, 14:50:32

I suspect we've all been there, Steve. The trick is not to tell the punter.

MoHux · Aug 16, 2008, 19:58:28

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.

john · Aug 16, 2008, 20:14:24

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.

MoHux · Aug 16, 2008, 20:54:59

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.

D-Dan · Aug 16, 2008, 22:37:32

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

john · 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.

MoHux · Aug 17, 2008, 18:10:35

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