Blue Screen + Memory Dump, Windows 7 64 Bit

Nefaro · September 21, 2015, 05:19:12 PM

Also be aware that if that tower has been kept in such an enclosed space, running abnormally warm due to reasons listed above, some of the heat transfer paste between the processor and heat sink may have been burned off by now.

I've had to reapply a fresh dose of it on some somewhat older computers that started occasionally freezing/BSOD'ing when running programs due to this slow wasting of the thermal transfer paste. When they run extra warm for years, it will wear down the paste (making it get flaky & evaporate) and the heat transfer will become less efficient after it slowly gets baked off to almost nothing.

I've seen a couple that had practically no paste left between them. Looked like a thin sheen of dust.

Just a heads up.

Staggerwing · September 21, 2015, 06:20:10 PM

Repasting the the processor and sink might not be such a bad idea if Minigus #1 is going to get some milage out of Gus's old 'puter. Arctic Silver paste is cheap but good.

Gusington · September 21, 2015, 09:15:27 PM

Duly noted. But for 4 years it's been running cool until this first instance. ALSO MiniGus 1 won't be playing much besides browser based games...this machine should easily have another 5 years unless juice is spilled on it or candy gets into its innards. My old-old computer (the one this one replaced) is now 8+ years old and is still running fine. MiniGus 2 gets that one. She's psyched :)

Bison · September 23, 2015, 03:12:26 AM

Well my computer is F##@D too. I get a black screen of death on startup and I quote the only think that appears "An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

/sigh/

I'd been having some issues, but I was NOT expecting this one.

Staggerwing · September 23, 2015, 05:40:25 AM

That's bad. Sounds like your hard drive went tits up. You could try to download a linux Ubunto or Mint distro on another comp and burn it to CD or put it on a bootable thumb drive and boot your sick rig from that. Then you could see if the drive is still readable and maybe save what files you can onto removable media. After that you could try to use some kind of online tool to try and repair the disk long enough to create an archive or image to load onto your replacement drive.

Bison · September 23, 2015, 06:11:38 AM

There were definitely some hard drive issues. I think some sectors were corrupted, because attempting to access programs that would bring up an error asking for program to be reinstalled. This ranged from OS to a variety of different programs. In the end, I couldn't even conduct a chkdsk through the command prompt prior to the black screen.

Gusington · September 23, 2015, 09:21:29 AM

How does that happen?

bob48 · September 23, 2015, 09:32:31 AM

Quote from: Bison on September 23, 2015, 06:11:38 AM
There were definitely some hard drive issues. I think some sectors were corrupted, because attempting to access programs that would bring up an error asking for program to be reinstalled. This ranged from OS to a variety of different programs. In the end, I couldn't even conduct a chkdsk through the command prompt prior to the black screen.

So not able to do a 'sfc_/scannow' OS check either?

Bison · September 23, 2015, 09:33:13 AM

It doesn't even boot now.

bob48 · September 23, 2015, 09:35:49 AM

Very annoying and frustrating.

Bison · September 23, 2015, 10:25:46 AM

Well I've got my baby of the past several years on the table and have pulled the SSD drive. Just waiting for some tech support bubbas to clarify if my Win7 license is still good or if it was voided during the Win10 upgrade and if my SSD is still under warranty. Right now the plan is to replace the SSD and reload the OS and factory settings and hopefully that takes care of most of the mess and buys me more time before I go all out and just replace the entire rig. My other concern is that I'd been having some GPU issue, which I think were driver related but I'm not entirely sure of that either. The problem is the possible outlay in parts has the potential to be quite expensive too. Not as much as a new rig but it's getting up there and at what point do you stop trying to save 3-4 year old tech and just bite the bullet?

Bison · September 23, 2015, 10:32:04 AM

I'm also considering pulling the storage hard drive too and just replacing that too in case part of the issue is virus related.

Bison · September 23, 2015, 11:08:15 AM

The beautiful interior of my rig...:(

Gusington · September 23, 2015, 07:06:11 PM

As you say above, why don't you just bite the bullet and put this time, energy and money into a new machine?

endfire79 · September 23, 2015, 07:11:47 PM

That sucks to hear Bison.

What kind of motherboard make and model do you have?

A few things to try and check first (if you haven't already):

- disconnect the problematic hard disk and check that the drive connectors (SATA I assume) are well connected. Try and boot again.
- boot and enter the BIOS (hit DELETE usually, but not sure about your system, watch the BIOS splash for information).
- Try to find something like 'boot settings' or disk Try to see if the BIOS detects all the hard disks that you currently have (if they still are) connected via hdd cables (sata or whatever you use). If that's the case, make the necessary corrections.
- Check the BOOT order (e.g. make sure you're still booting from the hard drive that contained your operating system, and not a USB or CD drive where you may have left a USB or DVD connected)

If none of that works:
- Do you have another desktop? You can try to swap the primary disk and see if it the suspect hdd works in the other computer, or take your other computer's hdd and plug it into the problem computer to see what works.

- Do you have a recent disk backup to restore to a blank hard disk?

On the positive side, your rig can't really be old, it doesn't look like it has much dust inside ;) My rig dates from 2009, only had some memory, new graphics card and a Samsung SSD to replace the old HDD, still holding up (waiting for Intel's Skylake CPUs to come out).