dreader blue screen

thanks for the advice... I'm running Memtest over night tonight, but I had another question... I ran chkdsk and it went fine, but i noticed that during the test it said at the top "The drive is dirty". I know you suggested I might physically clean the drive; is that what this means? I'm hesitant to follow through with any suggestion to physically clean the inside of my laptop for obvious reasons... Just wondering what you could tell me concerning all this. Thanks. --Chris

It doesn't mean the drive has dirt or dust on it. Chkdsk can frequently rectify minor issues with corrupted files.. But if they're badly mangled, you may need to reinstall. And before doing that, I would certainly run the Drive Fitness Test recommended by Bob Proffitt in his post below. If the drive has too many corrupted sectors, it's not worth working on.. A new drive would be in order.

Hope this helps.

Grif

so, I ran Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, and I ran MemTest, and I just ran RegSeeker. Neither the Drive Fitness Test nor MemTest found anything wrong at all. This leaves me slightly happy (no problem!?) and pretty baffled.

Are these programs the correct ones I should want to run? Is there anything else short of paying someone to look at my computer that I should do? Or perhaps should I just wait for another crash, hope it doesn't come, but if it does, record what it says and start over again? Thanks for helping me out, again. --Chris

This issue has also cropped up in a) overclocked machines and b) overheating machines. Either will give you the occasional glitch. It's a laptop so it's doubtful you overclocked it unless you installed some speed control or fan speed control software.

If the unit can be put up on a laptop cooling pad that would be a great idea.

One more test -> http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/

Light reading about what it does at http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-49487.html

I rarely use this one but we are looking a little deeper here.

Bob

At this point I'm pretty convinced it was overheating. Now that I think back, every stop error came up when several applications were running, always playing music and twice while a virus scan was running, plus one or two other programs. In addition, the laptop was always flat on a surface, which I don't normally allow it to be.

If the errors return and they seem to have no correlation to the computer's heat, I will return to this thread, but otherwise, I'm just going to be more cautious about where I set it down, etc. Thanks for all your help, everyone who helped me! --Chris

This helps, SpeedFan 4.28. Run it during heavy duty usage, maintenance etc..

Check for dust.

A new CPU cooler might improve the situation. See:

http://www.dansdata.com/coolercomp_p4.htm#kamakaze

link

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913379

Check your hardware drivers and do a system bios update. Many system BIOs can be obtained from eSupport.com. A reference is made to power management you might recheck these settings. This problem may require technical support from your OS or hardware manufacturer. This microsoft KB does not say what hardware is at fault.

According to the KB something is missing, most likely in a hardware driver. An error in the registry could be the missing item. Many registry repair utilities are available from the www.. These include free trials.

This is a long shot (5% or less) but this could be caused by a virus, run a scan.