So now that I've FIXED the problem... (long)

[MelodiousBubbles]

I need to see how I might prevent it from happening again, so here we go.

<bg> I own a Compaq laptop. I got it with Vista (yeah, I know) back in 2007. Worked marvelously until it decided it didn't want to register the wireless card any more about a year and a half ago. Alright... I can live with that as I use it mainly at home and have Ethernet cords up the wazoo. Then about a month ago, the screen went black on start up. It would work fine in safe mode and safe mode with networking, so it definitely wasn't any of the core components of the computer.

I tried doing a system restore. No luck. Then after fooling around with that a bit more, I finally said fuck it and restored it to the factory default. I had nothing I absolutely NEEDED to keep that I wouldn't be able to get back, so all was good. It worked for maybe an hour before going black on me again. Bubbles was NOT happy because restoring it had reactivated the wireless and all was smooth sailing.

Finally, I allowed my roommate to just wipe the damn thing and upgrade it to XP (yes, I said upgrade) since I have an install disc and an activation key that still had a use or two left on it. It was a whole mess because of my lack of driver discs and whatnot, but it was finally fixed and I'm contently typing away on my working-like-new Lunchbox at this moment.</bg>

My question to you, my lovely techies... Is would any of you happen to know what the hell that was, and if so, was it something I could have avoided? If it was caused directly by me, I'd like to have an idea of what it was so I can avoid it like the plague in the future. I would REALLY like to just leave the desktop in storage instead of in the middle of the floor in my video game room.

[crashhelmet]

If your screen was blank in Regular mode, but worked fine in Safe Mode, my first thought is the drivers. They're typically not "backed up" by the Windows Restore feature. I think it only backs up and restores the registry. After the wipe and reinstall, did you let it do it's automatic updates? That might've re-hosed whatever was hosed to begin with.

My initial thoughts anyway.

CH

[lordlundar]

If your screen was blank in Regular mode, but worked fine in Safe Mode, my first thought is the drivers. They're typically not "backed up" by the Windows Restore feature. I think it only backs up and restores the registry. After the wipe and reinstall, did you let it do it's automatic updates? That might've re-hosed whatever was hosed to begin with.

My initial thoughts anyway.

CH

Running with that logic (not saying for certain it is or not, just the most possible theory) it could be the windows update in Vista was overriding the drivers with the Microsoft ones thinking it would work better (HA!).

[bsaana]

I have to agree with drivers needed updating, or the BIOS needed an update. I used to have a Toshiba laptop that would blue screen and reboot after about 30 minutes or so. They had released an updated BIOS for it because the trackpad had some conflict with it. This was about 9 years ago now.

[MelodiousBubbles]

Alright, so I've looked through a few tech forums, and from what I've found, it was an update for Vista that had a bug in it or something.

Since I no longer have Vista, hopefully this problem won't pop up again.

[roothorick]

Every now and then, HP (who owns Compaq) has a bad batch of motherboards and issues recalls. You may want to check their support website and see if they have any bulletins for your model.

One of my bosses lost a laptop because the motherboard was defective and he didn't RMA it in time. (Ah, who am I kidding, that beast had more problems than that)

[underemployeed]

recently found out about a program called doubledriver, it is used for backing up your drivers before wiping your computer.... makes it a lot handier than hunting them down with google or actually finding your old disks. I'm glad I moved my old laptops image to an external harddrive before regaining that space, as once I ended up getting a copy of ghost, I could open the image and restore to factory settings with all the right drivers, at that point, I just deleted all the bloat crap, made an image of that and now I can go from windows viruses to brand new install with word and firefox in 5 minutes

[Andara Bledin]

I make a habit of keeping all of my updates (the type that get downloaded, anyway) in a special folder on my system, so I always have the latest driver, if not one or two iterations prior.

^-.-^