Options
Blue Screen of Death - Advice Needed
Abomination
Posts: 6,483 Forum Member
✭
Hi all, I posted here a few months ago asking for advice on a failed hard drive and there were some very helpful individuals. I guess I'm hoping for the same again.
I've a Sony Vaio laptop that I recently had to restore to factory settings. I spent 11 days backing up all of my files to the cloud and everything, though this week a new problem has arisen and I really don't know what it is.
The other day the laptop wouldn't let me log in, stating that my password was incorrect when it wasn't. It worked again when I restarted it, and I presumed it was problem solved.
Then yesterday I got a blue screen which said 'a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer' along with various other details I can't recall.
Today the same blue screen presented itself multiple times, and reached the point where it was interrupting me every ten minutes or so. I restore the hard drive to an earlier point in time in the hope it'd fix the problem but it had no effect.
Subsequently I reset the computer to factory settings once again, given I hadn't amassed any files worth keeping since my last problem was resolved. However no more than a couple of hours into using the laptop, I have once again been presented with this blue screen of death!
I'm totally clueless about these kinds of things so any input would be appreciated...either what I can do or at least what the hell is going on. The only suggestions I can find are to reinstall Windows 7 off of the disc, but the laptop came preloaded with W7 and I subsequently never had a disc.
Thanks to anyone who could help, I'd be most grateful.
I've a Sony Vaio laptop that I recently had to restore to factory settings. I spent 11 days backing up all of my files to the cloud and everything, though this week a new problem has arisen and I really don't know what it is.
The other day the laptop wouldn't let me log in, stating that my password was incorrect when it wasn't. It worked again when I restarted it, and I presumed it was problem solved.
Then yesterday I got a blue screen which said 'a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer' along with various other details I can't recall.
Today the same blue screen presented itself multiple times, and reached the point where it was interrupting me every ten minutes or so. I restore the hard drive to an earlier point in time in the hope it'd fix the problem but it had no effect.
Subsequently I reset the computer to factory settings once again, given I hadn't amassed any files worth keeping since my last problem was resolved. However no more than a couple of hours into using the laptop, I have once again been presented with this blue screen of death!
I'm totally clueless about these kinds of things so any input would be appreciated...either what I can do or at least what the hell is going on. The only suggestions I can find are to reinstall Windows 7 off of the disc, but the laptop came preloaded with W7 and I subsequently never had a disc.
Thanks to anyone who could help, I'd be most grateful.
0
Comments
http://heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/14-windows-7-direct-download-links
make sure you download the exact version you need eg Home Premium 32 bit, Professional 64 bit etc. Neither of the above will work if the BSOD is due to failing hard drive.
Some questions; after you do a factory install, do you add any drivers for other hardware, such as printers, webcams etc? Do you download the most up to date drivers?
Try removing and reseating the memory.
The password issue is a red herring. Nothing can make your password change and then change back. Either you were typing it wrong, your keyboard language had miraculously changed, or you have some strange malware.
Finally, malware doesn't normally cause blue screens, but a scan with Malwarebytes might show if you keep picking up something nasty online.
if you open a command prompt and type in "chkdsk" does it say anything about bad sectors? if so its new HDD time, i'd also if possible take out the memory and give it a quick clean and reseat it followed by cleaning out any dust from inside the machine if its doable.
I'll give the memory a bit of a clean today...it was opened up just a few weeks back so I guess some dust could have got inside the machine.
The blue screen in question is this, I hope it uploads okay as I'm going all of this by phone now...
http://postimg.org/image/d1ydocm61/
As for installing drivers for peripherals I made sure I had the most up to date ones for my printer last time. However I never got around to installing drivers for other hardware this time before the BSOD came back.
I'm guessing the password issue was indeed totally unrelated. It's not happened since and only happened the once. It's happened once before in the past about 18 months ago, where a simple restart of the computer resolved the problem, as was the case this time too
And I'll look into burning recovery disks as well. Hopefully whatever I end up having to do isn't too expensive...I'd happily just buy a new laptop if money wasn't an issue...a desktop if space wasn't an issue as well!
There is a program called BlueScreenView which can help make sense of the bluescreen.
As said though try reseating the RAM first.
Looks like your laptop's swapfile is either corrupted or it spans over bad sectors on your disk. Follow the instructions in the link if it brings anything.
This one is with your error code 7A:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/blue-screen-with-this-error-code/03276fa2-6dcb-44d0-a778-499d5d00b65d