Major Laptop Problem

Hi!

I had just bought a dell inspiron 6400 2 months back and its already started giving me problems..

i get a blue screen saying "dumping physical memory" and a whole lot of crap and then he system shut downs..

I did a little research and the guys here call it the "blue screen of death".. im not sure if its the same..

Is it really serious??

What should i do now?

Is it covered under the warranty?

Should i format my computer?

Who should I call?

Will they replace my computer??


Sorry for so many questions...

Thank You,
Sathya

 

Can you post more details on the blue screen. What does it say on it?

Could be a hardware issue... or something just messed up with Windows. Probably the latter but we'll need more details on the message.

Also, have you installed any new software or hardware? Any drivers? (Recently)

 

Yeah.. ive installed loads of softwares.. coz im a compuer student.. i need those.. i recently was installing a bluetooth driver to connect my laptop to my motorola ht820 headset...

And the blue screen stays for like 2 sec and then the system shuts down so im not able to know whats written on the screen

 

Press Windows Key + Pause/Break (or right click on My Computer and click Properties), Click Advanced System Settings (on the left of the window), Click Settings under Startup and Recovery, and Uncheck Automatically Restart. Press ok.

If this happened shortly after installing the Bluetooth driver you may want to try uninstalling it... but now you should be able to see the error message so let us know.

 

yea. i have a problem almost this guy.. my laptop.. won't come on.. the power light is on but nothing comes on..


Toshiba Satellite S1800
windows xp pro sp2
256 ram
30 gig hdd

 

Blue screen is very common in windows OS. You need not worry about this. Sometimes updating the driver for some hardware (the file mentioned in blue screen) might solve the problem. My dell had gotten the blue screen well over 20 times during the past one year. The sony FZ which I bought gave a blue screen just after a day's use.

 

Bluescreen isn't nearly that common anymore. Maybe in Windows 95 or ME, but I don't think I've ever had a blue screen in XP in 4 years.

My guess would be it is a driver problem. If you can get the bluescreen to stay long enough to read, it'll probably tell you enough to determine the driver that is a problem (likely the one you just installed). Then you can boot into Safe Mode and uninstall the problematic driver and reinstall the correct one off a CD or flash drive.

 

Yeah I can't even remember my last bluescreen. Years ago. Something's wrong there coolguy.

XP doesn't bluescreen unless there's a bad driver or bad hardware. I assume it's the same in Vista, although there are probably more bad drivers for Vista floating around out there, since Vista's pretty new.

sathyaterry, see if there are any driver updates from Dell that you can download. If it's happening more than rarely with the latest drivers, then I'd ask Dell about exchanging the machine. Also, it's possible that it's being caused by bad RAM. What are you doing when you get the BSOD? Is there any pattern?

 

If all else fails...reinstall Windows XP and then install software one by one and see which causes you to get a bluescreen and uninstall that one...