Optimus V issues

[Nyasa]

EDIT:
Got it back from PCS and now works fine.

I do have an additional question regarding display at it will probably highlight just how clueless I am! On the majority of web pages, the actual content only fills 2/3 of the screen width, around 3inches of blank space on either side. This is pretty irritating, especially as I haven't got fab eyesight. Any fixes for this besides zooming?



Hiya,
Since receiving my Optimus V this morning, it has so far completely black screened and crashed 3 times, once with the message about checking disk's for consistency. Also, Chrome is regularly crashing.
Any advice?

 

[ubuysa]

Hi Nyasa, welcome to the forums.

Did you order your Optimus with an OS or have you installed one yourself?

Have you updated your OS and/or drivers?

Have you installed any other software (obviously you installed Chrome)?

Have you added any hardware?

Do you have any external devices plugged in? Did they require any drivers to be installed?

When you say "black screened and crashed" is this after booting or during booting? If it was after booting what were you running at the time?

Have you run chkdsk /f on your disk(s)?

If you know how to access and read the Event Viewer logs take a look to see whether there are any Critical or Error entries in there.

I'm trying to get a feel for what is actually happening so that we can help you more. The devil is always in the detail.

 

[Nyasa]

Laptop came with Windows 7 installed, I have since checked for/installed the windows updates.
In terms of the drivers, I can't auto run the CD sent as unsupported OS. However looking at a different thread I attempted to install manually... Which of course may have gone terribly wrong! However, was crashing both before and after this.

I got a bit excited on the software installation front: Skype, Firefox, Steam, the dreaded iTunes.

No hardware has been added

My wireless mouse required a driver to be installed.

So my black screens, all after booting. Twice it just black screened and restarted with the typical windows did not shut down correctly, once it shut down and said "One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency". Don't think there has been a common theme with what I was running, 2 were whilst I was downloading a Steam game and once was when I was on a Skype call!

Since original post it has also bluescreened with System failure error (I think!)

I am completely novice with all things technological so please bear with me and thank you for the reply!

 

[vanthus]

As you have just received the laptop it might be worth trying a clean install of the operating system,instructions are given in the welcome booklet,the drivers will need to be reinstalled after you do this.
First though I would try checking the disk drive/s for errors,
Open Computer by clicking the Start button, and then clicking Computer.
Right-click the drive that you want to check,normally this would be the OS drive and then click Properties.
Click the Tools tab, and then, under "Error checking" click Check now.
To automatically repair problems, select "Automatically fix file system errors".
To perform a thorough check, select "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors".
To check for both file errors and physical errors, select both "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors".

 

[Nyasa]

Cheers Vanthus, running the disk check now!

Going let it run and go to sleep, and hope the fan doesn't start blasting and wake me up, will check in tomorrow!

 

[ubuysa]

So how did the disk check go? Your symptoms could simply be a bad sector on the disk, if that's the case the disk check that vanthus asked you to run (the same as the chkdsk /f I mentioned) will mark it as bad and assign a spare sector to replace it so your disk will be fine again. Depending on what data was in the failing sector (if there was any) you may have to reinstall Windows though.

If your laptop came with Windows pre-installed PCS will have already installed all the drivers. You only need to reinstall/upgrade them when new versions become available.

So it was crashing right out of the box before you installed any software at all? If it was ok out of the box it would help if you could remember what you did before you noticed the first crash. We're not trying to point the finger and say "ah, it's your fault!" it's just extremely useful to know what the root cause was.

None of the software you have installed should cause these problems - no, not even iTunes. They did all install correctly though? No issues or failures during installation?

If it blue-screens again, near the bottom of the mass of white text you'll see a STop Error Code. It will look something like 0x000000C1. Make a note of it and let us know, sometimes that can point to what's causing the failure.

I'm hoping it's just a disk glitch though.

 

[Nyasa]

The disk check ran overnight and was all finished up this morning, So we'll see if that has fixed it.
2
Yep, everything did install correctly, although I do have a feeling the crashing started after Steam!

Will keep my eyes open for the STop Error Code, should it blue screen again.

Cheers once again and fingers crossed it's resolved now!

 

[Nyasa]

Right!
It was: 0x000000003B .... number of 0s is debatable.

PCS have sent over a drive diagnostic so will do that now.

 

[ubuysa]

Right!
It was: 0x000000003B .... number of 0s is debatable.

PCS have sent over a drive diagnostic so will do that now.

There are 8 characters in a Stop Code

0x3B is a system level problem, it's often related to bad or incorrectly installed drivers so I'm wondering whether you attempting to install drivers manually is the problem there? It sounds like you didn't have complete success with that?

I would suggest that rather than mess about trying to sort this out you'd be better off taking vanthus's advice and doing a clean reinstall. Before you do that be sure to back up all your user data (back up everying under the folder C:\Users\your_name to be sure). Then you need to be sure you have the right drivers, if the CD PCS sent won't run you can download all the drivers for your build by logging on to the PCS website and in the Tech Support menu section on the left click Download, you will then be able to download the drivers for your order in a zip file. When you are installing the drivers install the chipset driver first, after that the order isn't usually that critical.

Do run the drive tester from PCS first though.

 

[Nyasa]

It passed the drive tester, however it just blue screened with the error 0x0000003B.

Think I'll return it to PCS and let people who know what they're doing sort it out!

 

[ubuysa]

It passed the drive tester, however it just blue screened with the error 0x0000003B.

Think I'll return it to PCS and let people who know what they're doing sort it out!

If you're confident about doing a reinstall of Windows and the drivers that will probably sort you out. Even if it doesn't it's worth trying, I'm guessing you don't want to be without it for a few days?

If you need a few pointers on doing a reinstall of Windows and the drivers just ask on here.

Thanks for the rep!

 

[Nyasa]

Got it back from PCS and now works fine.

I do have a question regarding display at it will probably highlight just how clueless I am! On the majority of web pages, the actual content only fills 2/3 of the screen width, around 3inches of blank space on either side. This is pretty irritating, especially as I haven't got fab eyesight. Any fixes for this besides zooming?

 

[steaky360]

You could change your resolution, not sure what resolution you are running at but if you change it to 1920 x 1080 that should sort it (many websites seem to display well at that resolution).

 

[Nyasa]

Tried to fiddle with resolution, it runs at 1980 x 1080 at default! Maybe that's just what screens of that resolution look like, I really don't know!

 

[steaky360]

I'm sure when I use my PC at home (I'm at work currently and the resolution is a lot lower on this laptop) I get websites to appear in full screen etc. Perhaps zooming is the best solution?