Repeated blue screen events

You could try booting in verbose mode to see if anything is missing or damaged on startup.

Spoke with Sony today - it's out of warranty, and they recommended a repairer.

Their free phone advice was to try invoking the Viao repair / rescue system by rebooting with F10 held down, that should conduct a hardware check.

I need to check the RAM sticks are correctlly located, and finally a hard reset (system reinstall of W7). The only programme that i cannot locate the license key to a copy of excel 2010, but Lightroom, and most importantly JRMC can be reinstalled. My music files are backed up, and I never stored photos on the PC from the start.

If that doesn't cure it, then it's off to be fixed - a new motherboard is circa £400-£500, and Hard drive around £180 all in. Think I can forget that new NAD or DAC...

You may as well buy a new laptop at those prices! And get the manufacturer's best cover option. (My Dells have always had 3-year/onsite/next business-day support - extendable by a further 2 years when nearing expiry - and have paid for themselves handsomely over the years.)

Are you still getting the blue screens?  Sorry to repeat what I said, but they will tell you what is wrong with the computer.

 

By the sounds of things, an update has screwed something.  If you want to test if it's the hardware or software, download ubuntu and burn it on to a cd or a memory stick, then boot from that.  It won't touch your current system, but it will allow you to use your computer.  If it's freezing when it's running that, then it may be hardware.  If it doesn't freeze, chances are it's software.

 

also, whoever quoted you those prices for repair is having a laugh.  A new 500gb 2.5" hard drive shouldn't be much more than 50 quid http://www.cclonline.com/product/45017/WD5000BPVT/Hard-Drives/Western-Digital-Scorpio-Blue-500GB-5400rpm-SATA-Hard-Drive/HDD0510/

 

Its probably due to corrupted system files.
- Click on Start button
- Type in cmd - and right click on cmd.exe and choose run as administrator
- Then in the cmd window type sfc /SCANNOW

Windows will now check all system files and correct any problems.
If it corrects any you will probably need to run windows update afterwards.

I agree with the Ubuntu method,but would prob go for Mint linux instead as it has better out of the box features making it a bit more useable with less learning, but either way it is a great tool for testing hardware & you never know you may just preff it to windows

 

Normally I'd agree, but the Sony has two key features worth preserving - a screen that is better than a Macbook Pro (which was the primary reason because I use Adobe Lightroom for photo editing) and the optical output. I agree £500 would get a perfectly adequate machine for streaming music.

 

It was laptop hut who quoted that - they are Sony's recommended out of warranty repairers, so I expect a top book quote. In the first instance I'd want an accurate diagnosis, then I can find a cheaper place to effect the repair.

I haven't had a BS event since Saturday evening - only a couple of screen freezes. What am I looking for, since the Blue Screen last for about 5s before rebooting!

I've already run Windows diagnostics - no errors found. I'm currently running the Viao hardware system check utility, so far the CPU and RAM is OK, as is the linear and radom seek test on the hard drive. I guess if it crashes during this test, it's a big clue to a hardware fault. 

Bear in mind this has a dual high speed hard disk, so again I'd expect it to cost a little more.

@Chebby - I had a option to extend the warranty on my son's Alienware laptop, but at £200 for 12 months its steep, and IMO a waste of money since they failed to fix a major problem properly under the original warranty. I have not enjoyed the Dell ownership experience at all, and frankly the utter BS from the rep today trying to tell me that th PC was much more delicate and needed more maintenance than a bog standard Inspiron had me reaching for a solicitor. Unsurprisingly he would not confirm those comments in an email to me. A few years ago, their quality was OK, currently it's poor. I have a Dell from my employer and have had some issues with it, mostly bits falling off. We have just switched a global IT contract to another manufacturer because of the high failure rates of their machines.

 

 

 

 

It's finished the Viao diagnostics check, and all OK (though I was told the system can check the hard drive OK when in fact it's not - self delusional or what).

I'me now doing another system restore going back two weeks prrio to several windows updates, I'll set up manual updates, force a Sony BIOS update check and see what happens. Need to find some missing albums but I know they are on the external backup, and download that NAD ASIO driver again. Let the noise commence!

 

Write down all of the infomation from the BSOD and let me know what it says.

 

 

Here's some instructions that show you how to stop the computer from automatically rebooting after a BSOD. This will give you all the time that you need.  http://www.ehow.com/how_6830626_disable-automatic-restart-blue-screen.html

The previous BSOD may also have recorded some information as a' Windows Log' in the 'Event Viewer'. Here are some instructions to show you how to find them.  http://www.ehow.com/how_7147208_check-event-viewer-bsod.html

 

OK how many "Error" events do you want?

 

There have been several this evening, but no BS or freeze. It's been fine so far.....what am I looking for?

 

I can see a few event ogs (ID 6008 ) which just state unexpected shutdown

 

EDIT - I've set unchecked the auto restart on failure. So far, this evening since the diagnostic and restore it's been perfect. I'm going to leave it powered up overnight, if there is a BS in the morning then I can capture any info.

TBH without being able to look through the logs myself (and googling the findings) it's hard to say exactly what you're looking for. I was hoping that you might find something obvious there.

 

Hopefully the system restore has fixed the problem and you won't get another BSOD. I'll keep an eye on this thread for the next few days anyway just in case it happens again. If it does happen again just make a note of what the BSOD says and it'll probably tell you what's causing the problem.

One extra thing to try from recent experience. Dedusting!

 

I had a problem with freezing on my laptop. Turns out it was full of dust. Take off any simple to remove panels. Blow hard through the vents, or vaccuum clean on lowish setting.

 

 

It was working fine this morning, so must have been a software update issue.

Now to find which one killed it, as will have to go through the windows updates manually.

I may be wrong but the repeated blue screen crashing might suggest a hard disk problem. I lost all my data once because of this issue, my system just crashed one day leaving a blue screen behind. Take it to an computer repair guy and let him have a look, if you are some hacker attacks victim he will also be able to deal with that problem.