Either a black screen or a blue screen

Hi!
Today morning my friend tried to start her laptop(Acer Aspire 5100) and it did not bootup it just showed black screen with power light on...the keyboard also was not active.
She did not know how to switch it off so she disconnected the power and then removed the battery then put the battery back and tried again..
now the laptop did boot and windows vista started and then after a min. it shows a blue screen with some white spaces and then restarts.
Then I tried to start it again in safe mode there also it stayed for a while but it again restarts.
now one of the following 3 things were happenning at random:
1. it shows black screen and does not boot up
2. it boots up starts vista and then in a min blue screen with white spaces and restarts
3. it boots up in safe mode - there sometimes it stays for a while while other times it again restarts automatically. (this of course if i ask to boot in safe mode)

I tried two things:
1. windows restore ...it could finish it but still the same problem continues
2. windows memory check (this option comes before the bootup)...it finished and said there seems to be some harware problems.

What do you think - is it a memory problem or motherboard/harddrive problem.....if it is just memory problem...she will just buy it and put a new memory otherwise she will send it to acer to get it fixed (its still under warranty).

Thanks.

 

Just send it to acer and save yourself some $$ on RAM. The real problem is that that response is too vague, the next step you might want to take is grabbing another ram test (for the life of me I can't remember what it is) and it can tell you what module is bad. Bigger problem to that is it still cannot inform you if your mobo is giving off odd frequencies and frying components or the mobo itself has a bad slot, which means you could still possibly end up with wasted money.

 

If you have two memory modules in it, turn off the laptop, pull the AC-adapter plug and remove the battery, and remove ONE module.

Plug the in AC-adapter back in, turn laptop on and see if it works then. If so, turn laptop off, remove power plug, and put the module in the other slot. Put power back in, turn it on again. If it works (boots up and loads Windows), both slots AND that particular memory module is probably okay.

Next, take THAT module out and do the same testing proceedure on the OTHER module. If THAT module also works, then you know it's probably NOT defective memory OR memory slots causing the problem.

You may need a BIOS update if it's like my 5570, which HAS a BIOS update at Acer Support titled "dual memory modules" or something like that.

If it's not the memory or memory slots, then of course you have to look further.

Good luck,

-- John D.