Blue screen and immediate shutdown -

[JimmyFo]

Hi all, I have a question - I'm running XP home edition (sorry, this Pro forum is the only one I see) and I have a recent problem that's pretty big. After a few hours (so far it seems fairly random), there is a quick flicker of the Blue Screen covered in white text, but before I can read it (its nearly instantaneous) the computer restarts. It apparently does not notice that it crashed in error - no boot options, no error reporting. There are no viruses or spyware programs on this computer. It is a Sony Vaio PCG-V505BL [laptop] which is a Celeron 1.7 with a Mobility Radeon. I've checked drivers and none need ot updated. It will do this at any time - in a program, or just idling on the desktop. Any suggestions on how I can at least figure out what's wrong here? Thanks a lot -

-james

 

[linney]

To get further information about any error look in your Event viewer.

Look in the System or Application folder. You can get to the Event Viewer via right click My Computer icon and select Manage.

Any errors logged in the Event Viewer can be expanded by double clicking on the error line.

Take any event error I.D. number and search for it on these sites.

http://www.eventid.net/events.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/ee/search.aspx

Also check any "Information" line that mentions "savedump" and you should find reference to "recovered from a bug check". This is the Stop Error that caused your problem.

You can also turn off "automatically restart after an error" so it will just halt at the fault and display the full Stop Error and blue screen.

Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties .
On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery .
Click to clear the Automatically restart check box under System failure , and then click OK . The error message on a blue screen should remain on the screen so you can record the error information.

 

[JimmyFo]

Hey, thanks linney - I did change it so that the it does not automatically restart, so I'll wait for a more detailed look the next time. Under Event Viewer\Application, there were no errors or warnings. Under Event Viewer\System, only one of the three crashes in the last 24 hours has shown -

Symbolic Name: ER_KRNLCRASH_LOG
...
Explanation
A blue screen (Stop error) was reported. The message contains details about the error. A matching event with Event ID 1001 might also appear in the event log. This matching event displays information about the specific error that occurred.


The event log and save dump are about a minute before that, but they don't contain any useful information (recovered from bug check). The only other save dump that I could find is around the right time and says "rebooted from a bug check", but there is no information on why. Other than reading the properties of the event logs, how do I read them? Thanks again -

 

[linney]

Below is an example of the event log: (From Windows NT but XP is the same except for dump folder paths)

Event ID: 1001
Source: Save Dump
Description:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was : 0xc000021a (0xe1270188, 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0x00000000). Microsoft Windows NT (v15.1381). A dump was saved in: C:\WINNT\MEMORY.DMP.
This information contains the stop code 0xc000021a and the four parameters. These can be very useful when troubleshooting certain types of stop codes. The parameters will mean different things depending on what type of stop code it is. For information about what the parameters represent, search the Microsoft Knowledge Base for the specific stop code. Not all stop code parameters are covered in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

 

[airbourne]

Are you using Roxio's GoBack software?

 

[airbourne]

If you are using GoBack(tm) you should be able to boot into safe mode, uninstall that software and get back into Normal Mode.

 

[JimmyFo]

Unfortunately, I don't have any recovery software. I'm not even sure what's going wrong with it, as there is only one logged system error out of close to a dozen blue screens in the past few days. I haven't any new software installed, nor viruses or spyware. Having found the dumps, .Net opens them, but no information is visible - I'd like to thank you both for your help so far.

 

[linney]

Sorry to harp on about "Save Dump" but I feel you might be missing out on the helpful information it may be able to provide.

Just make sure that in Control Panel/ System/ Advanced/ Startup and Recovery/ Settings/ System Failure, that you have ticked "Write an event to the System Log" If you don't have this checked a lot of helpful information will be missing from the Event Viewer.

"Save Dump" is not a red error message it is an "Information" line which you must locate and click on to get to the extra information. See if you can use the Filter option in the Event Viewer under the View menu (while the System folder is highlighted) to search for the "Save Dump" events. All you have to do then is use the down arrow (in the resulting window) to select "Save Dump" in the "Event Source" box. Click Apply and OK, then you will have all the "Save Dump" Information lines in one place in the Event Viewer.

Now you can click on them and get those "Bug Check" details.