PC keeps crashing - help!

[swee'pea99]

It's fine if you don't actually use it...just sits there happily chugging away. But if you actually use it for anything, it suddenly crashes, for no apparent reason. Blue screen of death, reboot. Half a dozen times yesterday. Driving me nuts.

It's a Fuji Siemens desktop, just out of warranty (of course) tho' it started showing these signs of flakiness within the first 12 months. FS of course just said it was obviously down to me installing dodgy software/catching something or...something. Anyway, definitley not hardware. They even provided a downloadable diagnostic prog that takes about three hours to do a full scan of all hardware, then comes back saying everything's tickety-boo...then it crashes.

I've tried running a prog called PC Tuneup which is supposed to help with this sort of thing...eliminated lots of 'risks'..made no difference as far as I can see.

It came with 1Gb of Ram, which should be plenty to run Windows XP, and I don't have any dodgy software. I have up to date AVG, also SpyBot and Adaware, all run, so I should be clear of nasties, inclding spyware and the like.

I've used msconfig to prevent startup of any but the most basic/essential processes, and I've disabled automatic downloads/updates.

...and still it crashes.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

 

[MacB]

Go to here:-

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/

the site is free and you can start a new thread and someone will walk you through fixes. Before doing that it's worth searching for existing solutions on the forums. The malwarebytes software found a lot of stuff on my machine that none of your Nortons, Adaware etc had stopped or identified. Download and run that first, I downloaded via another machine onto a USB memory stick. Then I could run my PC in basic mode and upload the SW directly. You need to run malwarebytes unconnected to the net in safe mode, then unconnected normally and finally full connection.

 

[Crackle]

It could just be a failing disk, happens. Have you got another PC you can put it in as a 2nd disk? If so, doing that, will enable you to run diagnostics more reliably or copy data off.

 

[Desert Orchid]

will it run in safe mode?
restore back to factory settings, have you a disc?
if problem is still there then it IS hardware, despite what FS say.
sounds like it's just a screwed up Windoze,
save what you can and reinstal

 

[Mr Pig]

I have a FS laptop which is doing similar things at the moment. It's been formatted three times now, had new RAM fitted and had a full system scan. I think it's the hard drive.

To be honest I've never thought the laptop was brilliant, I wouldn't buy another FS computer. Plus, these people built the Nazi's ovens!

 

[swee'pea99]

Tried running the malwarebytes but it didn't find anything. After three crashes in the first ten minutes this morning I decided the hell with it and used the recovery disc.

Installed WinXP. Very first thing it does first time out is throws up one of those 'Windows has recovered from a serious error - send report' boxes. Great. (Said this, in case it's a clue:

BCCode : 1000007f BCP1 : 00000008 BCP2 : F781AD70 BCP3 : 00000000
BCP4 : 00000000 OSVer : 5_1_2600 SP : 2_0 Product : 256_1

Plus the 'files included' bit:

COCUME~1ALANNE~1LOCALS~1TempWERb6b1.dir00Mini022409-01.dmp
COCUME~1ALANNE~1LOCALS~1TempWERb6b1.dir00sysdata.xml)

Spent most of the rest of the day up till now doing things like importing messages and address books into Outlook Express (gosh but they've made that easy and intuitive, thanks Uncle Bill!)

Just finished all that. Computer crashed.

Oh yes.

 

[Carwash]

To be honest I've never thought the laptop was brilliant, I wouldn't buy another FS computer. Plus, these people built the Nazi's ovens!

"By appointment to the Third Reich, purveyors of fine bakery and konditorei appliances."

Mmmm, German cake...

 

[alecstilleyedye]

kuchen…

 

[jay clock]

It may be too late, but in terms of backing stuff up I have an external drive and use a tool called Yadis to autocopy all files in My Docs to that drive. So if I have make a change to any file it is backed up instantly to the external drive

see here http://www.codessentials.com/

 

[MacB]

That does sound suspiciously like a hard drive failure, never fear, easily replaced and fitted. I did mine myself, cost me £10, on e-bay, and about half an hour. Used this site to walk me through it:-

http://www.helpwithpcs.com/upgrading/install-hard-drive.htm

 

[swee'pea99]

Thanks - yes, I was getting more and more suspicious of the HD. I think I have an old pc hanging around in the loft - might take the drive out of that & see how it goes. Thanks for the Yadis suggestion as well - I'll look into that.

 

[hackbike 666]

My computer 1 which is over 6 years old now suffered frequent blue screens.I built the pc many moons ago and after a lot of head scratching I disabled some of the services although I dont remember which ones.I used to always think it was the memory or graphics card.Since I disabled some of the services I haven't seen a blue screen since.

I think the Samsung Q40 suffered the same problem as well.

 

[oscar]

I had the 'Blue screen of death' Haaaaaaa (in Vincent Prices Voice). New laptop as well, tried the usuall things like Defrag and misconfig and system restore offering a sacrifice. In the end i ended up clearing my hard drive and reinstalling everything again (getting rid of all the freebies acer gives) i now have avg (free one) PC tools firewall and threat fire plus spybot search and destroy plus (thanks to you tube)
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoV7AG45lFQ&feature=related


registrey mechanic (if you use pc tools firewall block it from accessing the net as it does not need updateing)

You tube gave me most of my stuff (love it) any how it runs sweet now)

you can also get free programs from

http://www.download.com/windows/


for all your pc needs and if you need others try

http://punkcracks.nl.nu/

http://poppinjeremy.tk/


I use them (spyware and other nastys free).

 

[swee'pea99]

Post script...

Without wishing to tempt fate.....

Apart from that single post-instal warnings/error & crash, it hasn't missed a beat in a day and a bit, so maybe - just maybe - the hardware is alright after all and I actually did have some kind of nasty, despite all my scannings and anti-this-that-and-the-other software. It's quicker too - quite a bit quicker. Must be all that old crap that got cleared out.

Fingers crossed...

Now to checkout Yadis.

 

[hackbike 666]

Don't understand it as this laptop doesn't suffer that problem.Ironically though it's XP Media Player edition where the media player didn't work.I fixed that yesterday.