notebook died :(

[Comandante]

I was just browsing the net as usual and left my laptop on its own for a while, I came back few mins later and there is a blue screen that said the error was detected and system was halted to prevent damage, something like that. Not that this hasn't happened to me before, it happened a few times during the year but after next reboot it worked just fine. This time though I switched power off and on and tried to boot it again, it asked to check the drive and I let it. It came to stage 2 (winxp pro) and the blue screen came again. It stated this: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL .

 

Next thing I tried was to boot in safe mode, the first time I tried it came up to agp440.sys and it just stopped there for a loooong time. I shut it down.

 

Then I tried last known good configuration and that worked. XP booted up and I quickly managed to copy some of the most essential files to the other pc. This lasted for about 10mins and the blue screen came up again, didn't say anything just started dumping something onto the disk. Last known good configuration worked once more. After reading some posts on the net where some suggested the graphics driver was outdated or something, I uninstalled the ati control center and was going to update to the new 5.13 version but I couldn't boot up no more.

 

I tried turning the laptop on 2 more times but not even the startup screen came up (the very first logo screen), the monitor was just blank and the computer shut down. I suspect that the graphics chip may have died and if so how much, if you know, would it cost to replace it?

 

If you could give me any suggestions that would be great.

 

Thanks.

[Klaynos]

From what I've just read I'd say your best option is to try and install the newest vidio drivers...

 

Did you change anything/install anything before the bluescreen appeared?

||edit||could also be a motherboard problem :| new bios drivers fixed it in one case I just read but in others they had to replace it...

[Comandante]

a day before i installed ventrilo voip application.

 

right now i the pc sounds quite when i turn it on and the lcd doesnt turn on at all, as if some of the hardware died.

 

ill check the power supply tomorrow.

[5614]

If you can get the whole of the actual error message displayed on the blue screen (BSOD) it will be useful because you can search it on google and it'll bring up relevant results (incl. the official MS explanation of the error).

[Comandante]

well, this is what happened. this morning i wake up and press the power button but the lcd still doesnt turn on. i take the laptop and turn it aside so the keypad stands vertically on the desk and i press power button again when look, the lcd turns on!

 

I slowly put it back in normal position again and proceed onto loading windows in normal mode. Once it loaded it reported a hell of a lot of corrupted files mainly with avast antivirus. It also installed default drivers for graphics since I uninstalled the old one. So what I did is uninstall avast, copy all the important files this time (since this time the blue screen didnt come up so I had time to do what I had to do). Once I did all that I shut it down and restarted.

 

I let the scan disk go ahead and it did just fine. In stage 3/3 it said it found some errors and large space of disk that was free but not assigned or something like that. So it reboots itself once again and proceeds normally into windows, like nothing happened yesterday.

 

Now, I don't want to move it from this position on the desk but would like to know if there are any hardware diagnostic tools that I can check if there is anything wrong with the hardware.

[5614]

I don't know of any hardware diagnostics that will help you here. I mean what do you want it to tell you? That your computer is currently on and all the hardware seems to be working?

 

The original problem seemed software related, now with the LCD screen it seems hardware related. Or what I think is that you had 2 problems, one hard one software. You have now seemingly fixed the software and now just need to deal with the LCD... but it works fine now, and the prob was with the graphics, so you can't blame that hardware.

 

If the hardware is actually broken you can't fix it... it is working now, I'd treat it like normal and see if anything happens.

[Comandante]

ok, i left it on for 30mins and the blue screen came again, looks like hardware issue (no specific error message, just wants me to scan hard disk for bad sectors). thanks for support i'm taking it to technicians, they should fix it. (I feel like somethings wrong with power supply, im sick of this notebook, ill get another one)

 

regards