Topic: Dying Laptop

Hi guys.. I have a technical issue, where I'm pretty much screwed trying to start/run my laptop. At various points in usage for the past couple of days it has come up with a variation of BSOD (blue screen). At previous points it plamed a KERNAL_INPAGE_ERROR but as of lately it wont even open one program before freezing, at best, and it just says a crucial thread has exited or malfunctioned. at the bottom of the blue screen are two things. One is bit of technical information listed "*** STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x8217F978, 0x9217FAEC, 0x805c7478)" and then below that it says "beginning physical memory dump"

I dont really do much exploring online, so I think the only possibly outside source readily apparent may be through online poker. If thats possibly/likely (i hope not). Otherwise most things I do are gmail and AOL.

The best I can do I think to avoid a lockup.. is hitting F10 at the COMPAQ window and opening the PheonixBIOS test. I ran the short test and passed but may try the long if I can open that setup menu again.

What should I do??? Is it a disk error? recoverable? suggestions? Thanks! - Ryan

Somehow I got it to start up again, I've read bits online saying that I'm pretty much screwed and should get a new hard drive, which to my naive ears sounds like get a new laptop. School starts in 3 weeks.

Anyway I'm doing a full system virus scan and it seems to be chugging okay. I've decided to delete all the poker software which could have been corresponding with the lockups. Really all I need at college is the internet, Word, and AIM and I will survive very contently.

Still if theres anything I should do, or someone I should let look at it, I'm all ears. I will check back tmrw night, thanks again for your time - Ryan

You're too fast. =) Well stating the obvious.... if there's any critical data on that HDD.... get it off. At the very least back up your address book and bookmarks.

A few clues here... but you'll have to track them down.
http://www.google.ca/search?hs=7g5&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=0x805c7478&btnG=Search&meta=

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The goal in Life's Journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "holy moly what a ride!"

(Edited by NoJive on 08-11-2006 09:01)

Drivers could be the cause. I don't think it's a virus.
What happens when you start Windows
in safe mode?

Other than that, if it's not software related to a device, then it is a faulty device,
and you're better off backing up data from your HD and replacing it. Forget about viruses.

And replacing a HD, even in a laptop, is really very straightforward and cheap:
all laptop HDs have a standard shape/connectors, so you really have to find it's location
(by reading the manual, which you can usually get from google), pull it off, and pluck
the new one in.

You can get a decent new HD at 50us$ for the basic ones.

Thanks, I did some backing up in various forms and did some cleaning, I'm going to use it gently without any new installations for a bout 3 days to see if the error comes back. And to know that replacing the harddrive is straightforward is indeed comforting. Thanks! - Ryan

::Ryandrew's Page::

New questions -

Some might say i made this mistake, telling father, so now its top priority ever waking moment to try and "fix" the issue. First of all, I thought it might be a memory related issue because everytime I used certain software, or multiple processes were taxing my system, it began to hangup immensely or see a blue screen. To clarify, it has been days since I've seen a blue screen, but certain situations still cause immense hangup that will not go away.

So we did a test using Memtest86+, and it yielded no errors. My father's first move was to run the Compaq system scan, which yielded the problem he's been trying to fix for the past 3 or 4 hours: It says something to the extent that Cisco VPN client needs to be updated.. it lists the issue as critical and it lists a symptom as: Can cause, in rare cases, system lockup under normal use or blue screens.

So he was convinced by the symptom line that this is the issue. But what is Cisco VPN and how do i fix/update it?

The only time i've heard VPN (virtual page network?) before was with my software necessary to connect wireless at college. Which if you disable and uninstall the cisco vpn client (infact its already listed as disabled, even after restsrating after reenabling under Device Manager) then reinstalling the Haverford VPN software replaces the cisco vpn unit under network ..whatever.. in my Device Manager. However since all of this mumbo jumbo has occured there have been some issues. It never installs cleanly and never uninstalls cleanly. And I don't really know where to go? What's the best method to "update" Cisco VPN, and is this necessary? If my RAM is ok, then was it my hard drive causing the blue screens before?

Ryan

Another note - I searched my errors in eventvwr.msc and found that overwhelmingly, something like 3 times a second in spurts... the i had error 10021 from source DCOM. After googling it, I found a 7 step fix, applied it, no more DCOM errors, dont know if it is at all related to my issue, but its something - Ryan