[kuronekonya]

Hello, I own a Dell Inspiron 1501. It's on Vista Home Basic. I bought it in 2006. I have not added any extra ram, or sound cards, or anything. The physical hard drive remains untouched without any modifications.

The problem started suddenly early this morning when for some odd reason I kept hearing the sound of my computer restarting. It's that vista startup chime. It was really early in the morning so I simply thought it was being stupid and turned it off.

When I got back to turn it on after work it once again randomly restarted. This time I sat down to see what happens. Entering normal mode, the startup is fairly normal, and all my applications start to open, such as aim, gtalk, etc.

It happens really fast after that. Suddenly a quick message appears that says Windows is making an emergency restart, a brilliant flash of blue and blurry white, rather like a lot of lines, and certainly nothing legible, and the computer reboots.

I decided to open the computer up in safe mode (which is how I'm managing to type this out at the moment), and turned off the automatic restart when the bsod appears. I was hoping that the illegibility was simply because it was too fast. No such luck. When I restarted the computer again in normal mode, it once again returned to the blue screen, but the white on the screen was simply a constantly blurring, hundreds of white lines, rather like this: |||||||||||||| except also moving up and down at the same time, like my screen had malfunctioned.

It's a pain in the neck to have to keep starting my computer up in safe mode, since there's no sound. I've gone to system configuration and have set it up so that it only opens with the most basic programs and drivers. I'm going to restart my computer back on normal mode. Hopefully when this happens there won't be a problem. But then the question will be what's exactly causing it?

[kuronekonya]

Well, I got back afterward and it works fine with only the most basic system and drivers, so the problem isn't the core (thank goodness). Now I'm going to restart the computer again in normal but this time with only windows applications. If the problem is with one of the other non-windows problems, I'll find out soon enough.

[kuronekonya]

I know that posting multiple times is an internet faux pas, but I'm doing this so that anyone who is reading this can see where I'm going and hopefully point out something or give an alternative to what I'm doing now.

I just tried restarting window in normal mode with only the windows applications. Once again, the blue screen appeared after the usual two minutes. I guess this means that one of the windows applications has a problem, am I correct?

If there's anyone out there who can help me, please do. It's not debilitating per se, but it is extremely annoying.

[Rollin' Rog]

I can run a debugging utility on the dump files if you do this:

1 > create a new folder on the desktop and call it "dumpcheck" or whatever you like
2 > navigate to c:\windows\minidump and copy the last few minidump files to that folder. *this assumes 'c' is your boot drive, if it is not, subsitute accordingly
3 > close the folder and right click on it and select Send to Compressed (zipped) Folder.
4 > use the "manage attachments" in the "advanced" reply window to upload that zip file here as an attachment.

This might point us to a 3rd party driver causing the error, if one exists for it.


>> Since you can start in Safe Mode, I would also recommend a "Clean Boot" test:

First, restart in Safe Mode if necessary -- (tap the f8 key promptly on startup and choose the Safe Mode option from the boot menu) or Normal mode

Then:

Run msconfig and select the "Services" tab. Check "Hide Microsoft Services" and then disable the rest. Also uncheck "load startup group" on the general page.


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135 << written for Vista, but applies equally well to XP

Now restart and test the issue at hand

If no problems, run msconfig and recheck half the disabled items on the Services tab. Test again. If the problem recurs, UNcheck half the items you just checked to narrow down the culprit.

If the problem didn't occur, check the other half, so all the Services are enabled -- proceed to do this on the startup tab as well.

Get the idea? You want to isolate the problem to a specific startup if possible.

Note: if you already have items unchecked under msconfig > startups and are in “selective” startup mode – you should note what these are before beginning. They will need to be de-selected again.

[kuronekonya]

I tried all those already. But it looked like the blue screen was merely a symptom of something worse.

My hard drive died last night. Only a black screen showing "disc error, press clt alt delete to restart," and wouldn't restart. So it looks like I'll have to buy a new hard drive. Thank god everything's backed up.

Thanks for everything.

[Rollin' Rog]

Your manual, either available online or with the materials that came with the laptop, should include instructions on drive replacement.

You might try just rmoving and reseating the drive and see if that makes a difference first.

Good luck !