Blue screen - what now?

[Steve]

Using XP Home with SP2. Everything was working ok, did my normal
every-few-days reboot just to clean up stuff. Came up to a blue screen
telling me could not run Windows, suggesting I run chkdsk /f. Would
not boot to safe mode or to last known good config, kept getting the
same blue screen. Finally booted to Dell Win CD and ran chkdsk /r from
recovery console. It "found and corrected 1 or more errors." Booted
again, came up to blue screen. Tried one more time, it booted
normally.

Everything's now working, but I just got message: "Windows virtual
memory too low, Windows is increasing the size of virtual memory
paging file, during this process memory requests for some apps may be
denied." I clicked out of the message and everything appears to be
working ok.

I've backed everything up to an external disk. Anything else I should
be doing, or just wait and see if there are more problems?



--

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye.
The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

....Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

 

[Steve]

I've backed everything up to an external disk. Anything else I should
be doing, or just wait and see if there are more problems?

Just ran Spybot, it came up with two "problems" I haven't seen before
- Windows Security Center Antivirus Override and Windows Security
Center Firewall Override. It apparently wants to change the registry
entries for both of these, which are indicated as spyware problems.
Haven't done anything yet, wanted to check here first. I'm running
SystemSuite, which includes Trend Micro antivirus and Sygate firewall.



--

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye.
The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

....Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

 

[Steve]

Just ran Spybot, it came up with two "problems" I haven't seen before
- Windows Security Center Antivirus Override and Windows Security
Center Firewall Override. It apparently wants to change the registry
entries for both of these, which are indicated as spyware problems.
Haven't done anything yet, wanted to check here first. I'm running
SystemSuite, which includes Trend Micro antivirus and Sygate firewall.

Just checked the Security Center in Control Panel, it says "not
monitored" for both antivirus and firewall.



--

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye.
The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

....Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

 

[Malke]

Just ran Spybot, it came up with two "problems" I haven't seen before
- Windows Security Center Antivirus Override and Windows Security
Center Firewall Override. It apparently wants to change the registry
entries for both of these, which are indicated as spyware problems.
Haven't done anything yet, wanted to check here first. I'm running
SystemSuite, which includes Trend Micro antivirus and Sygate firewall.

The Spybot entry has nothing to do with your problems. Here is
information on that:

Why does Spybot-S&D flag changes in the Windows SecurityCenter? -
http://www.spybot.info/en/faq/46.html

It doesn't sound like a software issue. You might want to run RAM and
hard drive tests. Here are some general steps for hardware
troubleshooting:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

Malke

 

[Nepatsfan]

(e-mail address removed),

Just checked the Security Center in Control Panel, it says
"not monitored" for both antivirus and firewall.



--

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye.
The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

...Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Spybot S & D includes a feature which would report if alerts
that are
generated by the Windows Security Center have been disabled. A
number of antivirus programs (McAfee, Norton, etc.) disable the
antivirus alert during installation. Unfortunately, some
spyware does this as well.

If you want to test this, do the following: run Spybot and have
it fix those two problems. Now restart your computer. At some
point during the startup process you may receive a message from
your AV program asking if you want it to stop Windows Security
center from monitoring your AV protection. Answer yes. Run
Spybot and you're going to see those errors showing up again.
If you right click on the errors in Spybot you can choose to
exclude them from future scans.

For more info, take a look here:

Why does Spybot-S&D flag changes in the Windows Security
Center?
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/46.html

If you have any other questions concerning this issue you might
want to post them to the Spybot forum:
http://forums.spybot.info/forumdisplay.php?f=4

Good luck

Nepatsfan

 

[Guest]

When you get a blue screen or "blue screen of death", you must restart your
computer by TURNING it OFF (not shutting it down, you must hold the power
button for 5 secs., wait 15 secs. then power up, OR if you have a RESTART
button, push that instead). If you want to start the windows security center
again, go to RUN-->TYPE: services-->scroll to: Security Center-->click it, or
right click it, and click ENABLE SERVICE.

 

[John John]

What on Earth are you talking about and what does any of it have to do
with the original poster's problems? What the hell does the Security
Center have to do with anything that was mentioned by the OP? And
shouldn't one type Services.msc in the Run box to get to the Service
Management Console? Not that it would do any good or fix any of the
problems mentioned anyway.

John

 

[Steve]

When you get a blue screen or "blue screen of death", you must restart your
computer by TURNING it OFF (not shutting it down, you must hold the power
button for 5 secs., wait 15 secs. then power up, OR if you have a RESTART
button, push that instead).

Yup, that's what I did. There was actually no option, since
ctrl-alt-delete didn't do anything.

I've since run a deep scan with System Suite's memory diagnostics, no
problems found. Then, just in case the page file had become
corrupted, I changed the page file setting to "no page file,"
rebooted, confirmed deletion of pagefile.sys, changed the setting back
to custom (800-1600MB), rebooted again. We'll see if this changes
anything...



--

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye.
The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

....Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

 

[Steve]

Using XP Home with SP2. Everything was working ok, did my normal
every-few-days reboot just to clean up stuff. Came up to a blue screen
telling me could not run Windows, suggesting I run chkdsk /f. Would
not boot to safe mode or to last known good config, kept getting the
same blue screen. Finally booted to Dell Win CD and ran chkdsk /r from
recovery console. It "found and corrected 1 or more errors." Booted
again, came up to blue screen. Tried one more time, it booted
normally.
Everything's now working, but I just got message: "Windows virtual
memory too low, Windows is increasing the size of virtual memory
paging file, during this process memory requests for some apps may be
denied." I clicked out of the message and everything appears to be
working ok.
I've backed everything up to an external disk. Anything else I should
be doing, or just wait and see if there are more problems?

It doesn't sound like a software issue. You might want to run RAM and
hard drive tests. Here are some general steps for hardware
troubleshooting:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

Thanks. I've run all the hardware diagnostics from SystemSuite, tests
memory, hard drive, etc, nothing comes up abnormal. When I reboot,
everything works normally for a while, then sometimes slows to a crawl
(can take 30 seconds to open a small text file in Notepad). When it
starts acting like this, it seems to crawl only on the first instance
of doing anything - for example, the second text file opens right away
in Notepad. Opening an email might take several seconds, but the
second email opens instantly, etc.

--

The wages of sin are death,
but by the time taxes are taken out,
it's just sort of a tired feeling.

....Paula Poundstone

 

[Malke]

Thanks. I've run all the hardware diagnostics from SystemSuite, tests
memory, hard drive, etc, nothing comes up abnormal. When I reboot,
everything works normally for a while, then sometimes slows to a crawl
(can take 30 seconds to open a small text file in Notepad). When it
starts acting like this, it seems to crawl only on the first instance
of doing anything - for example, the second text file opens right away
in Notepad. Opening an email might take several seconds, but the
second email opens instantly, etc.

Then I'm sorry but without being able to see the machine, I just don't
know. Any clues in Event Viewer? Hard drive using PIO instead of DMA?
Windows handling the Page File? All Temporary/Temporary Internet Files
cleaned out? Does the machine act like this in Safe Mode?

If you figure it out, it would be great if you would post the solution.

Malke