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Blue Screen

M

marcplante

Senior member
Patient is a Dell Inspiron 531 (?) desktop running Windows Home 7. It started Blue screening without any system changes.

When booted to its OS, it generates a Blue Screen.

When booted to a CD, the controls, display work fine. I hoped something was corrupted in the OS so tried fresh install. The computer came up with a Blue Screen during a mid-install reboot.

Could there be something wrong with the hard drive controller? Something on the motherboard? or the drive itself? I was able to put the Hard Drive into another machine and access it to backup files before doing the wipe and install, so it appears to be OK.

Ideas?
 
The specific BSOD code would definitely help, as would knowing if the same code repeats multiple times.

Also, please describe the power light on the front of the computer when power is turned on. Is it blue or amber? Is the light continuously solid, or is it blinking? Does the power light change when the system BSODs?

Additionally, if you have not done so, make sure a speaker is hooked up when you boot the machine so you can listen for any BIOS beep codes. If there are any beeps (other than a single beep indicating it has completed the POST process), please describe the repetitive beep pattern.

It couldn't hurt to burn a bootable memtest86+ CD and test your memory modules for faults. Also, since you can load the hard drive on another system, you can use a bootable diagnostic utility from the hard drive manufacturer to test the hard drive for faults as well.

Finally, you don't have RAID mode enabled in the BIOS do you?
 
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I pulled a couple old sticks of RAM out and it booted up ok. It is only running 2g now, but it's for my 7 yr old daughter, so it will be fine for a while.

Thanks for the hints,
 
Just new it had to be hardware related. Usually BSOD's are hardware or driver related. Running Memtest86+ over night on the sticks of RAM will ID the faulty module. I had defective RAM before and ran Memtest overnight and then I ran one stick at a time to isolate it after I found out the RAM was the problem.
 
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