[anb]

I'm asking this question on behalf of my girlfriend, who's pretty much computer illiterate, and owns a computer that's been having some problems. Her computer is a dell vista laptop, if you need further system specs or whatever I can post them, but I think this is a fairly straightforward problem.

Basically, shortly upon booting up she gets the blue screen of death, saying "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. If this is the first time you've seen this, [blah blah blah]".

Then there's a part that says "Memory_management", and some other stuff but I didn't really understand it and it went away too quickly for me to catch it. This seems to happen either immediately after booting up (around the screen where she enters her password), or within 30 minutes of logging on. More often than not it happens immediately. She's owned her computer for about two years and never had this problem before. I've tried a few suggestions on the internet but they haven't worked (like running a virus scan in safe mode (where the computer doesn't get the blue screen), but it yielded 0 infections). Regardless, I'd really like any ideas that people might have, even if you think I've tried them already.

thanks.

[TheShooter93]

Any way you can get the rest of the "blah blah blah" on the blue screen? The stop code and other information would be very useful in diagnosing the problem.

[Phantom010]

Can you post a few of your latest minidump files? They are located in C:\WINDOWS\Minidump. ZIP them and attach them to your next post.

Right-click the minidump file, select Send To, then select Compressed (zipped) Folder.

Windows will compress (zip) the file and save the new zipped file in the same location as the original file.

If you get an Access Denied error, disable the UAC.

[anb]

It's hard to get the rest of what the blue screen says because it goes away very quickly - I assume the minidump files will tell me what they say? The rar with the minidump files is attached here.

Another thing that should be noted is that, at the same time, we've been getting "windows explorer has stopped working/ program x, y, z has stopped working/ etc." warnings, that temporarily disallow us from using those programs (but only temporarily, which suggested to me that it must have been a virus - again though, malwarebytes shows 0 corrupted files).

edit: also, as I was just shutting down her computer, I got the blue screen of death again, which is significant since it was in safe mode after I chose to shut it down.

[Phantom010]

Your minidumps are consistent with unknown image and memory corruption. I would tend to lean towards RAM as the most probable cause for your BSODs.

Run a Memtest to test your RAM. Burn the ISO image to a CD/DVD and boot from it. Follow the on screen instructions.

[anb]

Just curious - if I can barely get the computer to boot up how do I get memtest to work? Could you give more detailed instructions as I've never used that program before.

[Phantom010]

You need to reboot the computer and access the BIOS settings. From there, change the boot order. Select the CD/DVD-ROM as the first to boot.

How to Change Boot Order in BIOS