Schitzo Vista

[John K]

I have a Dell XPS 410 that is about 2 yrs old, came with Vista. SP1 is installed. For the most part it has worked well most of the time, but lately boot up is a chancy thing. I leave it on all the time, but when it does automatic updates and needs to reboot it can take multiple attempts (2, 3, 4) at starting. Or when I try to use the computer in the morning I get a blue screen and then the restarts....... I have tried booting to command prompt and doing chkdsk, but I seem to have forgotten most of the commands. This morning when it happened I selected 'Start normally' and it went into chkdsk by itself, something it has not done before, did three stages and deleted errors etc and restarted fine.
When I get an error screen it flashes by so fast I can almost read it. Is there some way to stop it and print it out? This is getting to be maddening! Any suggestions?

 

[Pablo]

Are you SURE it's not a hardware or a "pest" problem?

 

[punisher]

Yup. I suspect hardware, especially power supplies, with those symptoms. Might be time to crack the case, find an open molex connector and hook up a multimeter to keep an eye on voltage during bootup.

 

[newtoncd8]

Go to Start ; Control Panel ; System ; Advanced System Settings ; Click on the advanced tab ; Click settings under startup and recovery and uncheck automatically restart.

Next time you get a blue screen, report the error you get. I am guessing either video card or memory, but we will know more once you post the error.

 

[John K]

Went out this morning, came back and it happened again. Most often it occurs when coming off screen saver. Maddening. Took about 5 restarts. I changed the automatic restart, will report back. I assume the molex connector is the 5 volt plugs for drives?

 

[John K]

Got the blue screen again last night. It said:
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen restart your computer. If this screen happens again follow these steps.

Run a system diagnostic utility supplied by your hardware manufacturer. In particular run a memory check for faulty or mismatched memory. Try changing video adapter.

Disable or remove any newly installed hardware and drives. Disable or remove any newly installed software. If you need to use safe mode to remove or disable components restart your computer, press F8 to start Advanced Startup option and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:
** STOP: 0x0000007F(0x00000008, 0x8018D000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Collecting data for crash dump...
Initializing disk for crash dump...
Beginning dump of physical memory.
Dumping physical memory to disk: 100
Physical memory dump complete
Contact your system admin or technical support group for further assistance.

 

[John K]

I also checked voltages: The 12V read mostly 12.00 12.01, but dipped some to 11.95, 11.94 once. I didn't think that significant. Also 5.1V on the other lead. From what I've heard about Vista, I most suspect the video card. This pc has 4 GB installed from Dell. My video card is ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256MB DVI VGA, TV-out. I do have an old pc that I could swap out the video card....don't think it would work well but maybe as a test??

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/137539


Stop 0x0000007F errors can be bad hardware or bad drivers, or a combo of both. It's a generic error code.

I suggest updating your drivers from the ATI site to see if this gets better for you.

 

[John K]

i have run the diagnostics and memory checks - no errors. TNS - thanks. There isn't any reference to Vista on that page, don't know if that makes any difference? I have tried updating drivers several times. I also seem to have trouble with the ATI site. I don't remember what happens exactly but I have trouble using the drivers there. May try again.

 

[newtoncd8]

Can you also check the option to write an event to the system log and also kernel memory dump. Post the memory.dmp file.

Also, you can view the system log under Control Panel ; administrative tools ; event viewer ; Windows logs ; System log. See any red exclamation marks?

 

[John K]

Whole bunch of errors when I used event error. Event 38, Kernel-WDI SEM Initialization. Is WDI = Western Digital? In Sept I had a total of 13 of these events, in Oct so far I had 50, 12 on 10/19 alone. I could not find the file to send it, search did not locate it. Can you tell me where to find it?

 

[newtoncd8]

The memory.dmp should be in the \windows directory.

As for the error you reported, about the only thing I can think to suggest is to hit the Microsoft Technical forum at http://www.microsoft.com/communities/default.mspx.

I would probably backup my data, reformat and reload Vista, but I will caveat that statement by saying, I enjoy playing around with both XP and Vista.

 

[OVERKILL]

WDI is Windows Diagnostics Infrastructure.

 

[John K]

Well, I found the file but I cannot open it, and I can't paste it here either...

 

[moribundman]

I just hope Mystic didn't see this thread's title.

 

[John K]

Can't say I have fixed it, but since the problem seemed to be when Windows was in sleep mode, I reactivated the screen saver. I don't remember what I was doing but the screen saver was being a nuisance and I changed it to none. Since I have done that I have only had one blue screen in four days or so....a BIG improvement. Thanks for the advice.