Blue Screen of Death!

Ugh! As a nice after Christmas present, our main desktop computer decided to have the old Blue Screen of Death this afternoon.

I am not even sure where to start with this? Is all hope lost? Is the computer dead? Is there an easy fix or should I just call in a professional?

Basically what happened... there was a lightning storm. I went to shut down the computer. It wouldn't shut down. I disconnected the power. I went to hook it back up when the storm was over and blue screen.

My first thought was.. "All of my thresh files!!" Ugh.

It could be an easy fix or it could be a symptom of something bigger. My suspicion is that you just corrupted a few req'd files.

HOWEVER, I would not worry too much about your thresh files.

Even if you Hard Drive has started to fail it is possible to retrieve most/if not all information from it.

I'll let someone more skilled at explaining steps to resurrection, but I wanted to assure you that the world is not over :)

One word: Backup. The hard drive of a computer is twice as likely to crap out than any other component in your computer, and that is exactly where you store all the files you don't want to lose (like thresh files).

I would also suggest a surge protector as well for your cords.

Yeah I have a surge protector because my computer got fried in a storm over a year ago. I always like to unplug it anyway, because now I am paranoid! I back up all the kids pics, but nothing else unfortunately. ::sigh::

It's hard to say what exactly is wrong at this point. I'll note though that most computers have a switch near where the power cable plugs into it. That switch will always shut a computer down. I almost always flip that switch before I unplug the computer for any reason.

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Originally posted by Cais
One word: Backup. The hard drive of a computer is twice as likely to crap out than any other component in your computer, and that is exactly where you store all the files you don't want to lose (like thresh files).

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I don't know about the "twice as likely" bit, but the fact is that any other component can usually be replaced without changing the rest of the computer (I say "usually" because sometimes you just can't obtain a matching replacement, eg memory for an old computer), and apart from stupid Windows Genuine Advantage, nothing will be any different. So definitely make those backups. Also, the surge protector is good, but if you're prepared to pay the extra dollars, I strongly recommend a full Uninterruptible Power Supply. (Article desperately needs some work, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninter...e_power_supply has plenty of information about the different types.) For under a hundred dollars, you could get a line-interactive power supply - that'll protect you against all types of changing input, without blowing your budget OR your fuses.

As to retrieval now... are you sure it isn't just booting again normally? Oftentimes a BSOD is cured simply by rebooting. If the computer absolutely won't start, then the best thing to do would be find a local geek, who could:

1) Most likely, replace the one faulty component and get you going again. It might be memory, power supply, almost anything, but it's probably just one component that's fried.

2) Swap your hard drive into a completely new box and set it up for you. You'd get a brand new computer, either with your old hard drive, or with a new one, with your old drive appearing as D: or something.

3) If all else fails, a USB-IDE adapter will let you get your data off. Requires a little fiddling around with a desktop HD, but any local geek should have all the tools and everything to do the job for you.

The main worry here is that Windows might have corrupted something, especially if the computer had actually been running when it crashed, and you had had programs active - their data may be damaged. Do you happen to know what was running when it bombed?

Thanks for the info guys. I am gonna call someone to come take a look at it.

It was shutting down when it went kaput. Actually attempting to shut down, which wasn't happening. I tried rebooting, but I get this black screen that tells me to go into safe mode, etc. When I attempted safe mode a few times I got the blue screen. Now it won't even go to that. It just freezes up.

Now onto the local geek!

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Originally posted by Ismenia
Thanks for the info guys. I am gonna call someone to come take a look at it.

It was shutting down when it went kaput. Actually attempting to shut down, which wasn't happening. I tried rebooting, but I get this black screen that tells me to go into safe mode, etc. When I attempted safe mode a few times I got the blue screen. Now it won't even go to that. It just freezes up.

Now onto the local geek!

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The black screen telling you to go into safe mode just means that Windows has a little flag saying "Ooh, something went wrong". For instance, if the power goes out in the middle of booting, you'll get that flag. Does it work if you just tell it to boot normally? Sometimes Safe Mode introduces more problems than it solves, and a normal boot would actually work.

I had originally attempted the normal start, but it went to the blue screen. Now it just freezes up on the black screen. You can't even toggle between safe, last version of windows, normal start, etc.

Rosuav, sounds like to me it is just a few corrupt bootup files. If it is consistently at the same spot it is likely not your RAM.

Do you still have your windowsxp cd? When your start your computer enter the BIOS (either DEL or one of the F keys). Set your bootup sequence to be cdrom first. Boot from the windowsxp cd and select Repair installation.

That might be a simple fix.

Pae, I'd probably agree, although there's always the possibility that there's something worse.

Ismenia, if you don't have an XP CD around, or you don't feel like playing around with it yourself, I'm sure any local geek worth his silicon will have one. If it's freezing on that black screen, you're going to need something else to boot. (It could still be very simple to fix, but it's going to be more complicated to diagnose, especially remotely.) Onto the local geek!

Everyone needs a local geek. If you can't find one any other way, just go to any gathering and ask if Chris is around. For some reason that I do not fathom, a LOT of geeks are named Chris, and a lot of Chrises are geeks. I wonder if you could sort out your problems by going to a crowded shopping center and snagging their PA system to say "Chris, can you come to Shop 42B? We have a problem with a computer." Geeks tend to be curious creatures, so it might well work.....

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Originally posted by Rosuav
If you can't find one any other way, just go to any gathering and ask if Chris is around. For some reason that I do not fathom, a LOT of geeks are named Chris..

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Come to think of it. 2 out of the 3 Chris's I know are computer geeks. Odd.

Before anything I would suggest getting that information off the drive (after that happens all the rest of the fixing becomes less stressful and easy). Which requires an IDE-USB converter. Most geeks will have something that will work.

If you can do that, afterwards I'd suggest just a hard reformat. Erase it all, start from scratch, and see where you can go from there.

You are all speaking "Geek" to me. He he. Since it doesn't seem to be a simple fix a non-geek can figure out, I will just find my local Chris and have him fix it.

Thanks guys!

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Originally posted by kestra
I would also suggest a surge protector as well for your cords.

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If you're going to get a surge protector, DO NOT spend money on the cheap, $10-20 multi-outlet ones. They're set up for a single surge only. After they've been hit once, their fuse is blown and they're just another power bar. The better ones range from $40-300, and are definately worth the investment. Obviously, you don't have to go to the top end.

Well, the computer geek came out to fix my computer. Just for the record his name was Dan not Chris.

It took him an hour and a half to fix the dumb thing, so nothing I would have attempted would have helped. He wasn't quite sure what happened to it. It had some registry error issues on it, but no viruses he could find.

It is back better than now. He even put Foxfire on it for my browser, which was a discussion in another thread about Internet Explorer and its vulnerability.

Anyway.... Thanks guys for trying to help me.

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Originally posted by Ismenia
It is back better than now. He even put Foxfire on it for my browser, which was a discussion in another thread about Internet Explorer and its vulnerability.

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Smart move. I'm posting from Firefox right now, and it's excellent; and I have yet to come across ANY site that I have had to flick over to IE to view. (There are IE-only web sites in the world, but I've yet to find one that's actually important to me.) At times it's not the fastest thing in the world, but since I have so little experience with IE, I can't say which is faster. I do know that Chrome beats Firefox on speed, quite often, but Chrome's UI... mmm, dunno what it is about it, but I don't really like it so much, so Chrome's staying as one of my secondary browsers.

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Originally posted by Rosuav
Smart move. I'm posting from Firefox right now, and it's excellent; and I have yet to come across ANY site that I have had to flick over to IE to view.

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Windows Update requires it, and that's important.

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Originally posted by Pae
Windows Update requires it, and that's important.

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Yes and no. I've disabled Windows Update on a number of computers - they're running happily on SP2 (although if anyone wants to do this now, I believe SP3 would be a worthwhile enhancement) and all updates up to around about the middle of last year, and nothing since. System stability is fine, but I recommend that this be done only in a firewalled situation. On the flip side, if you are using Windows Update, that's still not really a web site. It happens to use Trident as its UI, and it is accessed over TCP/IP, but it's basically a program written in ActiveX. (FYI: Trident is the rendering engine that drives an IE window, same as Gecko is the Firefox layout engine, WebKit is Safari/Chrome, etc.)