How bad is this....?

[ottid]

I was merely looking through my usual pages on the internet, had a windows explorer window open and a word document I was working on open. The wireless connection failed so I was sort of waiting to see if it would fix itself without me hitting the "repair" button which I do all to often on the Uni network, I put it down to too many people trying to use the network at the same time.

Anyway all of a sudden a blue screen with righting flashes up. I automatically thought "Blue Screen of Death" having never seen it. But it said "If this is the first time you have seen this restart your computer" and a whole lot of other stuff, it filled up most of the screen. I really should have paid attention to what to do if I had had the screen before.

It said something at the bottom about dumping some kind of memory, I'm not sure but if someone was to guess it I would probably be able to say yes or no.

I restarted the computer by killing the computer, ie holding down the power button for a few seconds. I waited half a minute and turned it back on. Powered up as usual and I can use everything I did before. I was careful though, made sure to back up all of my Uni files on to my flash drive, just in case. It did come up with "A serious error has occurred, report to Microsoft?" So the computer still registered on start up that an error had occurred, hence the hard shut down.

I'm running XP Pro SP3
Internet browser is FireFox
Word is from Microsoft Office 2003 Student Edition

I just had a look at my Hard drives memory, I've only got a gig left so I'm going to be dumping a whole lot of stuff onto my external this weekend, coul this be what caused the problem?

Another thought is that I usually hibernate my laptop instead of shutting it down properly as it results in less time for start up. I do try to shut down properly once a week or so, so that it can do any updates or anything else it does when its shutting down/starting up.

[Der Cute]

Mem dumps happen -

Do me a favor, and goto your My Computer on desktop.
Right click
Select Manage
go to the Event Viewer
Open the tree up
Under Event Viewer there are 3 or 4 different lines -
Application
Internet Explorer
Security
System

Take a look inside the Application and System sections. Look for ERRORS with a time/date stamp of when this happnened.

Give us the error code number and all the text in the dialog box that comes up when you click on a error line.

We'll go from there.

Cutenoob

[lordlundar]

Probably have too much junk on your system that's eating up resources. That list of other stuff on the BSoD is a detailed list of it.

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, though it's probably a good sign to do a system reformat/restore.

[ottid]

Ok Cutenoob this is what I found: A lot of errors, but I've found the one I think it is

This was in the description box:
Error code 100000d0, parameter1 00000098, parameter2 00000002, parameter3 00000001, parameter4 80548169.


It was also the only one that came up with an error cateogry (102), and it was the only one that said "System Error" everything else was what seems to be a string of letters that probably means something, but not to me

Thanks for the help guys!

[Der Cute]

Could you get a screen shot?
There's more in that box that I'll need to poke around with.

ALL the text.


Also - any updates on drivers or new hardware installs lately?

Cutenoob

[ottid]

So I have attached the screen shot of the Event window, but this is what it says in bytes:
0000: 53 79 73 74 65 6d 20 45 System E
0008: 72 72 6f 72 20 20 45 72 rror Er
0010: 72 6f 72 20 63 6f 64 65 ror code
0018: 20 31 30 30 30 30 30 64 100000d
0020: 30 20 20 50 61 72 61 6d 0 Param
0028: 65 74 65 72 73 20 30 30 eters 00
0030: 30 30 30 30 39 38 2c 20 000098,
0038: 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 32 00000002
0040: 2c 20 30 30 30 30 30 30 , 000000
0048: 30 31 2c 20 38 30 35 34 01, 8054
0050: 38 31 36 39 8169

And when it gets switched to Words:
0000: 74737953 45206d65 726f7272 72452020
0010: 20726f72 65646f63 30303120 64303030
0020: 50202030 6d617261 72657465 30302073
0030: 30303030 202c3839 30303030 32303030
0040: 3030202c 30303030 202c3130 34353038
0050: 39363138

Just so that you had everthing that is possible to get from that window

[Der Cute]

Dang.

A lot of this error depends on the memdump log. I can't do much more than barrage you with questions:

1: any updates in OS lately?
2: any hardware installs lately?
3: any updates in Anti Virus (what kind) lately?
4: what EXACTLY where you doing. Surfing, yeah. but- wireless, wired, dialup. what browser. what did you have running in background...etc
5: Memtest86 - run that. http://www.ehow.com/how_2020294_test-ram-computer.html
6: chkdsk - run that. http://www.ehow.com/how_2037270_run-chkdsk.html

If those all pan out and you have no errors - I'd like to see more of the BSOD itself.

You can turn off automatic rebooting in XP:
Start, Control Panel. System.
Click Advanced Tab in System
Select Startup and Recovery (bottom)
UNCHECK box that says Automatic Restart (bottom checkbox).

Now, if this error /BSOD happens again, I need you to write down the white text - stuff like IRQ_ERROR_LESS_THAN_EQUAL or MEM_DUMP_ERROR ...the stuff in caps. Might try writing down the error codes, but just need error code - not the 8 digit string .

There, we might find out why this is happening.

Now- XP normally doesn't reboot w/o having an issue. XP has been a very nicely steady OS for a while. But - issues are caused by Hardware Failure, Hardware Issue (arguement with software), Software Failure, and Overheating (name the main ones).

I don't know if this will happen again for you - you may have had a gremlin escape. (sneaky buggers) Let's hope he's done escaping, and this won't pop up.

Cutenoob

[ottid]

Thanks, a bit busy at the moment, so maybe on the weekend

I haven't noticed any updates, I'm running Sophos Antivirus, get it free with the Uni, it usually updates hourly, or atleast tries to, doesn't work through the Uni network, and I can't change the settings for it. I was not connected to the network at this stage, but I had been connected to the University Network onto the web wirelessly, using Firefox and every application I noted down, everything else was just what normally runs in the background when the computers on(gave that bit in my first post ) Oh, and no hardware installs.

[EricKei]

CN has the major issues covered (and how! ), so I'll just mention a minor thing -- if the drive that has less than 1 gig free is your Windows boot drive (c drive, that could be a contributing factor. Generally speaking, you wanna try and keep at least 20-30% of the Windows boot drive free if you can. Dropping too far below that will generally slow the entire system down. Slower boot drive = greater likelihood of random weirdness due to the drive not being able to keep pace with the demands being put upon it.

Also, if you drop below ~17% free on any given drive, Defragmenting said drive will go from "a way to kill ten minutes" (ooo! lookit the pretty colors!) to a looooooong, boring, drawn-out process that may not actually do you any good.

PS, definitely seconded on MEMTEST86, it has helped me out in the past.

[ottid]

Thanks!

My main problem is that I have around 3 or 4 copies of different songs and stuff from the different media players I use, but I'm going to put a lot of the blame on Itunes, but it could be Creative Only problem is I don't want to delete all of my music and start from scratch. I am slowly going through Itunes and moving the file it recognises to a specific folder. Once all of the music is in that folder, I'm going to hit the delete button on every other music file that I have put on the computer. Does anyone know of an easier way to do this without having an Ipod? Actually, maybe I should ask that in a new thread, but I will see what happens here first

[technical.angel]

http://www.dupkiller.net/index_en.html

There ya go. It'll kill the duplicate files for you.

[ottid]

Hmmm, decided to run memtest86+, but from the link I can't find it. It says "See link below" on the page, but I can not see which link it . I've done a quick google search but I can't figure out which one is the right one...

[Der Cute]

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

then go to Download - Precompiled EXE for USB key - use a usb stick.
download that link, save to USB stick and run off of the stick.

Or a floppy, just read the text in the links. You 'll need to decide which one to use.

Cutenoob

[ottid]

uh-oh?

I've been trying to do the memtest for the past hour, and, well, for some reason it wouldn't do it on my flash drive, so I went to do it from CD. I think I've gone through 3 or 4 CDs. I don't mind, don't use them that often now. The Flash drive it kept coming up on the boot that it was an Invalid format.

I've decided to try the one from Microsoft, but I can't open my CD/DVD drive now... (can't do floppy, on a laptop and I don't have an external floppy drive) Any reason why this could be? My computer still recognises it as being there.

Edit: I just right clicked and ejected, my button on the drive isn't working...)

Just tried the USB one more time, it says

"Invalid system disk
Replace the disk, and then press any key"

Obviously I've tried but doesn't work...

[Der Cute]

Well...

For CD drive - do you have a paper clip?
Find a metal plain paper clip.
Unfold the longer part of it so it looks like a stick with a loop at the end.
Find the tiny hole on the door of the cd drive.
Poke the paperclicp thru the hole, it pops the drive open.

As for the mem test - I can boot off my usb stick just fine. Is your BIOS set to allow usb stick booting?
Or, do you have Nero - burn the .iso CD rom to the CD - and boot off of that.

Do you know how to change your boot order?

Cutenoob