[dba-Tech] Computer issues...

Jon,

1) Run chkdisk in safe mode.  If Windows shuts down as it is writing to disk
all manner of things can be mangled.  Tell it to fix errors.

2) Uninstall the webcam driver and see if that helps 

3)Get Memtest86, build a floppy and let that run for a few hours.  Memory
does go bad.

The most likely culprits for blue screens are drivers and memory in that
order.  However disks tend to get munched (random writes in random places)
during the blue screen so that just adds to the problem.

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 
-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jon Tydda
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 9:31 AM
To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues'
Subject: [dba-Tech] Computer issues...

Morning all, I'm having "issues" with my computer and wondered if anyone
could come up with some ideas that I haven't thought of...
 
For the last couple of days, my pc has been randomly restarting itself while
I've been using it, which is kind of annoying. Once when it restarted it
showed me the "Windows has recovered from a serious error" message, so I
clicked on the box and it told me that I had an issue with a driver. Now the
only thing I've been using recently that would need a driver that I've not
used in a while is my webcam, so I went to the creative website, and updated
the driver (incidentally, they've got a great widget that searches your pc
for hardware, and shows you the relevant drivers and utilities for it all,
so that's my tip of the day!).
 
Downloaded and installed those, next day it was doing it again. I figured
that the prolem might be with MSN Messenger, so I switched back to Trillian
last night, and all was well. So I thought that seeing as how I have the day
off today, I'd try and work out what the problem is with MSN. Except today,
I turn the computer on, and I can't get into anything other than safe mode.
The welcome screen appears, I choose a username, it starts to log me in,
shows my desktop, and then logs me out. Whichever account I use, I can't do
anything. Ctrl-alt-del doesn't work fast enough to bring up a process list.
 
So I started in Safe Mode, ran Trojan Hunter, Counter Spy, Ad-Aware 2007, a
full AVG Virus Scan, Spybot and a Panda ActiveScan. Trojan Hunter found
something in my download folder, and removed it, all the others were clean
apart from the occasional cookie, which I removed.
 
Started again, still no luck. Back to safe mode, disk cleanup, CCleaner,
Defrag. Nothing. Tried getting into Windows Update too, to see if there's
anything that I'm missing, but it keeps coming up with errors. Belarc says
I'm not missing anything anyway...
 
So I'm stuck in safe mode - with no firewall, anti-virus or resident
anti-spyware... Any ideas? :-)
 
I'm running XP Pro SP2, nothing special...
 
 
Jon
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