Sudden crashes/restarts.

MollygizerMollygizer New York, NY
edited November 2005 in Science & Tech
Beginning about a week ago, I'll be chugging along, my laptop and I in perfect harmony -- and bam! A blue screen will flash quicker than the human eyes can register, the computer restarts. Lovely. The first few times, it simply restarted. Recently It's had to run CHKDSK and delete orphan and corrupted files; the corrupted files are always the same. This time around, my Mozilla Firefox has begun to crash the second I attempt to put in any entry into the URL or search box. The bookmarks toolbar is also apparent, though it never had been before.

I'm not sure if this would be a hardware, software, or spyware type problem. I've run Spybot and cleaned out a couple of things. AdAware finds nothing while it runs but seems to be freezing at the same place each time. Is there an error log where I can see what this blue screen keeps trying to tell me?

I run Windows XP on a Pentium 4 processor. The laptop is a little over two years old, but I do use it constantly. I had the hard drive replaced earlier this year after a crash which the technicians told me was due to a physical crack in my hard drive.

And if someone could delete the other version of this thread since I hit save and cancelled and didn't think it went through, that would be awesome.

Comments

  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited November 2005
    Go to System Properties>>>Advanced>>>Startup and Recovery and uncheck the box marked "Automatically Restart". This will allow the error message to remain on the screen long enough to copy it down so you can post it here.

    To get a head start on the problem, it might be a good idea to run Memtest-86. If your laptop doesn't have a floppy drive you can download the .iso version and make a CD. Boot from whichever disc(k) you make and the test will start automatically.

    Good luck. :)
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2005
    Mollygizer, first let's try to see if your problem is hardware or software. First, see what brand of hard drive you now have installed, then go to their website and download and run their diagnostic software on the hard drive. I know that you posted that you replaced it this year, but even new hard drives have been known to be defective. If the hard drive passes inspection, then go and download Memtest86 and run it on your laptop. This will test the ram in your system and make sure your problem isn't being caused by a stick of ram in your machyine going bad. You can download Memtest86 from here.
  • MollygizerMollygizer New York, NY
    edited November 2005
    Got the error message. Thanks for telling me how to turn off the restart.

    IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

    STOP: 0x0000000A (0x01580007, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x80515212)

    No checkdisk when I restarted this time.

    I was in the middle of a Trillian conversation when it occurred. Reinstalled Firefox and it's working fine now, though I lost my bookmarks -- minor annoyance.

    Ideas?
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited November 2005
    That error means it would be a great idea and run the memtest program. You either have bad RAM, or a driver problem making an illegal call to your RAM. The latter is easier to fix (not to mention cheaper), but let's make sure the RAM itself isn't the problem before we try fiddling with any driver issues. :)
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