Start up problems - blue screen of death - help pleeeeze

[TimC]

Hi

I have a mini PC with Windows 7 64bit installed, it operated fine for 18 months or so before I started to experience problems; the screen could vanish into a multi-coloured blur, freeze or disappear into a blue error screen .. or the whole computer could simply power off. I have not added any software or hardware since I bought the computer. I religiously do all my Windows / software / driver updates, I have checked for malware/spyware/viruses, windows scandisc comes back with no errors.

I have a printer, office software and security software - no games or anything dramatic. The hard drive is partitioned with a software C Drive, Data B Drive and a Temporary data A Drive; mostly the computer holds very large quantities of spreadsheets and eMails. Internet use is limited to eMails and Facebook.

For a while I found that (if the problem occurred and cold booting was the only escape) going into safe mode and scheduling a disc check of any partition would enable (after rebooting into disc check - no errors found) the system to run. Sometimes it would run for a bit and then play up, other times it would freeze mid safe mode or mid disk check - or it might just carry on fine all day.

It got so bad that I formatted my hard drive and clean installed windows - once, with just windows installed, the screen disappeared into a blur, the computer froze and wouldn't work. I have clean installed Windows onto a freshly formatted hard drive three times over two weeks - the clean installs were problem-free allowing the setup to proceed as normal.

Sometimes I can switch on and everything is fine all day, sometimes it might be fine only for an hour or so - On this last switch on, I had to cold boot ELEVEN times - three visits to safe mode, two frozen scan discs - then it seemed to work, switched off by itself - wouldn't switch on, froze in windows start up repair - cold boot went through start up repair with no error found, restarted into windows and froze. Cold boot, gambled on 'start windows normally' and its been fine ever since .... this time.

I am considering some upgrades but don't want to upgrade a faulty machine - is this likely to be a hardware issue ? If so, does anyone know which bit (so I can include it in the upgrade) ? I am a mite frustrated as you can probably guess so any advice, help or opinions would be appreciated

 

[vanthus]

Have a look in event viewer It's normal to have a lot of warnings & errors so best look at the event viewer immediately after the problem occurs,then check if anything is logged for that particular time.
Go to control panel(All control panel items)/performance information and tools/click advanced tools on the left hand side/view performance details in event log.
this will take you to diagnostics-performance & boot /shut down events,It may or may not give a clue to the problem,but worth a try.
If nothing obvious showing there,at the top of the tree on the left hand side,click on custom views/administrative events.
You might get more information that points to something by selecting details/Friendly & XML view,in the event viewer.you could also try selecting "event log online"at the bottom of the page.
Also if getting BSOD's and they disappear too quickly to read,disable automatic restart.to do this type SYSDM.CPL in the Start Search box.
Click the "Advanced" tab and click the "Settings" button under "Startup and Recovery"
Uncheck the option Automatically Restart.

 

[TimC]

vanthus thank you so much

your brilliant suggestion lead to a lot of critical error notification reports which had me googling all morning: and it boiled down to two problems: I have now rebuilt my registry counters , and I found and reinstalled the 'coprocessor' driver [which is not as easy as it sounds].

I have been shutting down and restarting most of the afternoon without any problems, first time I could do that in months

 

[vanthus]

vanthus thank you so much

your brilliant suggestion lead to a lot of critical error notification reports which had me googling all morning: and it boiled down to two problems: I have now rebuilt my registry counters , and I found and reinstalled the 'coprocessor' driver [which is not as easy as it sounds].

I have been shutting down and restarting most of the afternoon without any problems, first time I could do that in months

Glad it has helped you so far.A software or hardware problem can cause the issues you were having so always worth doing as I suggested to try and pinpoint the problem before doing anything else.