Computer problem (need help asap please)

doyle369 · 20 May 2009 at 15:44

Hi,

When I turn my PC on it will start to boot up, go through the general things and then a blue screen message will come up. I dont have enough time to read the message it is only on the screen for like 1 second, then my PC will just re-boot again.

I really dont want to re-format as I have important college work on my PC, but it might have to lead to that

Hope someone can help

Thanks

Will

brenkehoe · 20 May 2009 at 16:13

Disable re-boot on error and then you can at least see the message. Does it make it as far as the start up options like safe mode etc ?

theheyes · 20 May 2009 at 16:18

Could be bad memory or a bad disk. Run memtest and/or chkdsk.

theheyes · 20 May 2009 at 16:20

doyle369 said:
I really dont want to re-format as I have important college work on my PC, but it might have to lead to that

I won't go on about backing up your work, but you really should have more than one copy.

However, provided you haven't encrypted your drive you can easily cherry pick the files you want off the hard drive with a Live CD. Do this before you start tinkering.

doyle369 · 20 May 2009 at 16:22

brenkehoe said:
Disable re-boot on error and then you can at least see the message. Does it make it as far as the start up options like safe mode etc ?

How do you Disable re-boot on error ?

brenkehoe · 20 May 2009 at 16:25

What version of Windows is it ? If its Vista then if you press f8 when starting up one of the options should be turn off restart on error or something along those lines. If you can boot in safe mode then you can do it via properties on my computer and start up and recovery.

doyle369 · 20 May 2009 at 16:27

Windows XP

doyle369 · 20 May 2009 at 16:32

brenkehoe said:
Disable re-boot on error and then you can at least see the message. Does it make it as far as the start up options like safe mode etc ?

Yh, I can see all the options like safe mode, but when I press enter on safe mode it just reboots

doyle369 · 20 May 2009 at 16:40

Here is the error message

stokecity_m · 20 May 2009 at 16:50

my computer was doing the same, although it would take longer for the blue screen to appear.

Worked out it was a stick of ram that was faulty.

philjohn · 20 May 2009 at 17:06

As others have said, probably faulty ram. Get a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD and run a few hours of MemTest86+ to rule that out or in.

brenkehoe · 21 May 2009 at 08:55

Try run a repair with the Windows cd first. Boot up from the cd and pick the repair option

linktoinsanity · 21 May 2009 at 09:08

brenkehoe said:
Try run a repair with the Windows cd first. Boot up from the cd and pick the repair option

No. Test the memory first. It's unintrusive and if it turns out to be the problem then you haven't changed anything important on the hard disk. As said use Memtest86+ (not Memtest86 as if you have 4GB RAM or more it will continuously reboot the system). Leave it running overnight if possible and see if it finds any errors.

brenkehoe · 21 May 2009 at 09:16

A repair shouldn't do anything except for replace the windows files should it ? And it only takes like 5 minutes, but then again it won't achieve anything if it is the memory.

Admiral Huddy · 21 May 2009 at 09:23

The bluescreen is actually telling you what to do.. It may have a damaged boot sector on the HD. You need to run a full surface scan and repair using CHKDSK /r from the recovery console. Your files will be fine.

(this implies /f)