Blue Screen of Death

[woolfy42]

One of my computers has suddenly started crashing to the blue screen. Is there anything I can do or do I have to get someone in to sort it at vast expense?

[daffy654]

There is too little information in your post to know whether you need to get an expert to fix it. If you can post the operating system of your PC, it's age and the code contained within the blue screen it would help any techies enormously in perhaps fixing your propblem.

[daffy654]

Oops, typo above. *problem*

[woolfy42]

The OS is WIndows XP and the computer is about 3 years old. Unfortunately I didn't note the code. I an only remember the first line said something about hardware.

[Buenchico]

Start with the obvious:

Press F8 while booting your computer, to see if you can get into Safe Mode. Assuming that you can, your screen will look very odd (and extremely basic) because the video driver won't have loaded, but you can still follow this route to run System Restore:
Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore.

Select a date prior to when the problem first arose, and restore your computer's registry to that date. (You won't lose any data, such as emails, documents and pictures. However if you've installed or updated any programs between the restore date and now you'll need to repeat the process).

Chris

PS: If you've recently installed any new software or hardware, that might be the cause of the problem anyway. Uninstall anything which you regard as 'suspect'.

[woolfy42]

Right, I'll give it a go! Thank you so much Chris - I'll let you know how I get on.
Btw, I have been plugging and unplugging an external hard drive occasionally and both drives are pretty full. Could this be a problem?

Thanks again,

John

[Buenchico]

Thanks for the reply.

I've had some serious problems occur immediately after I unplugged an external drive, so I can't rule it out as a possible cause of your difficulties.

Chris

[woolfy42]

RIght, well I can't do anything with the external drive connected, but the machine is working again without it.

Strangely, if I plug the external drive in, I can then access it.

Anyway, your information has helped and got me experimenting.

I have to admit I was a bit of a geek with the RISC OS system and just hate Windows. I have just bought a rather fancy new PC that runs XP and RISC OS. It has a solid state drive that gives me the speed I was used to.

No point in looking back I suppose!

Thanks again,

John