[michael1981]

running a dell vista, almost 2 years old. last night, went to turn off computer before bed. upon moving the mouse to deactivate the screen saver, i noticed firefox and aim were already closed though I did not close them. I went to restart them and my computer rebooted. It went to a black screen after the initial boot, i never saw the log on screen.

after another reboot, i was prompted for a repair program. it searched for problems, then it took forever to repair and it hung up. rebooted again

same thing but this time after the repair, it prompted me to do a restore. i finally allowed it to do a restore point.

after reboot, i got to my log in screen. under normal, i cant log in as the first application it saw, it seemed like it failed. numerous times i tried and i would get different errors.

werfault.exe app error

atbroker.exe app error

even got a few blue screens, one of them was PFN_LIST_CORRUPT

another was PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGE_AREA

I got into safe mode but with a black background, nothing on my desktop. no programs seem to work, at least the few i tried like virus checker. i cant run msconfig from start screen, it flashes and disappears. I have to open task manager to do so. I attempted to go to start-explore and the windows explorer screen flashes very quickly and disappears. Im trying to backup some documents.

I noticed I can go to safe mode in command prompt and I can run a directory on documents and my files are there.

however, my comp reboots often for no apparent reason sometimes. during one of them, i was prompted for the repair program again. this time, i ran the memory diagnostics tool.

in standard, almost immediately, i get a status update stating "hardware problems were detected....contact manufacturer". I let the scan run and when it reboots, i never get to see the log. sometimes i can log in after the reboot to my initial vista page but black background.

in extended, it seems to hang at 21% part 1 test or 10% overall done. im running that right now and its hung there for almost 30 minutes. Ive noticed some people have issues with it hanging at 21% and they dont have the same issues (at least not from reading their problems) as me.

lastly, no more warranty, or any paid customer service help from dell. all that expired after the initial year.

is this definitely a hardware issue and if so, what do you think it is, the memory or hard drive, etc...?

Edit- dont know if this is any help but when I attach my flash drive to the computer, i can not open it up to see whats on it even though I know it has a few work documents and have a 2nd older computer Gateway XP that it works fine on.

Any advice is GREATLY appreciated!!!

[michael1981]

update

diagnostics on extended has gone to 55% or 28% overall. it finally got past the 21% hangup

update again

onto part 2 of the test. hung up at 21% of that as well. prob be another 30 minutes for it to move past 21%

[michael1981]

extended got done, rebooted, blank screen after log in. never got to see any report

did memtest...runs for about 5 seconds, it stops at 80% of test. pass says 0%. reports 2 errors on test 1 (highest error line). This cant be the complete test, obviously. but its already snagging after just a few seconds. I dont know what that concludes, if anything