Blue Screen on new Laptop?

Hi,

Forgive me if this isn't the correct place for this but...

I was using my new laptops memory card reader, when I got a blue screen on inserting it into the slot telling me the laptop had shut down to prevent damage. Scared me quite a bit as this new PC is only 2 weeks old.

I'm using Windows 7 64 on an Acer 5742G.

I'll provide details of the event if someone can tell me how to find them. Please help!

 

Reinstall the card reader driver? Should be a Ricoh

 

I'm not certain if it was that, but it happened upon inserting the card 1st and 2nd time. Then when I tried it a third time, it worked fine. My action screen reports an Nvidia failure too, but it rebooted just fine both times.
Is this anything to worry about?

 

Perhaps. Go to the event viewer and see what was causing the issues. I recall having a brand new Acer 18" that kept on blue screening and the ATi drivers kept crashing. Reinstalling them fixed it.

 

This seems to be what the problem was.

 

Download and install the latest drivers from Acer Support - Welcome to Acer Support. Should fix your issue.

 

Great. Thanks

Do I just install everything listed under Acer 5742G?

 

If it's not blue screening, I wouldn't. But might a good time to stress test your laptop and test out every function so you don't run into an issue further down the line.

 

Two questions...

1) How do i stress test it? I'm a noob have mercy.

2) How do I know what when to update fromthe Acer website?

Thanks for the help so far.

 

1) Run Prime95 for 18+ hours. You also try Intel Burn Test, Furmark.

2) You can't really. You would just have to visit it periodically. support.acer.com punch in your model # and it should list all the drivers.

 

Don't know if that was a joke but I definitely do not recommend doing that. That's a good way to potentially kill your CPU and GPU.

 

Why not? If your laptop can't run Prime95 for 18+ hours without crashing you got issues. All my laptops/desktops have been stressed to ensure system stability.

 

Hmm..Not sure what's the best course of action to take then. Running anything at max for 18+ hours doesn't sound good to me.

How long does Intel Burn test work for?

 

Just thinking about this more. This is a brand new laptop, bought it a couple of weeks ago, and I don't want to run anything that could potentially fry my mother board or burn out my CPU.

Is there really any reason for this kind of test to be performed on a new laptop?

Acer Aspire 5742G.

 

Depends on how "paranoid" you are or how certain you want to be of how your hardware works under extreme conditions. The safest way to stress test like that is to start running the program and watch your temperatures. If your temperatures climb to 90+ degrees, stop the test immediately. It also depends on exactly what settings you run Prime95 on. Some settings aren't as taxing as others. For most people, running Prime for, oh, 15 minutes to half an hour is usually more than enough, assuming you don't get excessive temperatures beforehand. Even if you do, note that you're unlikely to stress your computer that much with "normal" use. That is, after all, the point of a stress test; to push your system to the limits.

Edit - oh, or for bragging rights. Some people like to show how "cool" their gear is.

 

Just follow classic77's advice and solve the problems as and when they happen, don't look for them.

 

I'm not showing off my gear, it's just to ensure he doesn't run into any further problems down the road as he's already beginning to have issues from the get go. Perhaps my original post of 18 hours was too long but at least 2-4 hours which simulates heavy load on a laptop. But there will be times customer complain their system overheats or locks up and we run prime95 on them for extended periods.

By following the methodology can lead to bigger issues down the road. Say for instance his model has Bluetooth, but he doesn't use it yet. But say after his warranty expires he decides to go use it and ruh roh it's not working. By not testing the complete functionality of a notebook is shooting yourself in the foot.

In fact, we had an Acer where the bluetooth was not working properly but the customer didn't realize til 5 months later. Turns out Acer had when putting the notebook together accidentally severed the bluetooth cable. After waiting 3 months on Acer for the proper part, turns out he had a bad motherboard. All that from a non-working Bluetooth.

Now I'm not trying to scare you but you should definitely test out our laptop thoroughly to ensure proper functionality during the return period of the place where you bought it. Not doing so is unwise.

 

Okay, so I do a stress test, couple of hours or so.

Will that completely test my system and all it's capabilities; Bluetooth, graphics, CPU, ram etc.?

Also, will a stress test void my warranty?

And do they come with a noob friendly function that does all the technical stuff for you?

Another thing, the BSoD has not been seen since, so my untrained mind believes it may have been a result of running in battery power and for some reason using my card reader OR my pc trying to run the geforce card in low battery.

On another note, my Ethernet card, for some reason, has no driver.

 

Depends on the stress test. Prime95/IBT will test out primarily your CPU/RAM. Furmark will stress CPU/GPU/RAM.

Make sure you have HWmonitor running or another program that monitors temperatures.

What do you mean your NIC has no driver? Did Acer not install it? Go to Acer's site and download the driver then. I think Acer might have hosed your OS install from the beginning.

 

Oh, this wasn't meant as a strike against you in particular, just some people I've seen that like to brag about how cool their system runs after 12 hours of Furmark or Prime FFTs. Usually, though, with these high-stress programs, you'll reach the (approximate) limit of your cooling system within minutes, 5-15, usually. After that, it's mostly a matter of seeing if it continues to rise or stays stable. If you like, you can continue running past the half hour or hour mark, but I find it's rare that it'll error out if it doesn't error out fairly quickly. Oh, or if you're testing after an undervolt or some other "non-standard" change. Undervolting can occasionally throw odd results that won't get picked up right away.

 

On system information it says my ethernet card has no driver. Remember you're talking to a noob here. I may be wring. The PC seems to work fine otherwise, runs smoothly except for the BSOD issue, which hasn't returned since. Runs games nicely, though I haven't tried it with anything recent. Wireless internet works well and it's generally a nippy little system.

I haven't uninstalled anything major.Just most of the crap demo programs Acer installs on their systems.

 

By no driver do you mean Device Manager doesn't see it or do you have a Yellow exclamation mark? Or when you plug in the Ethernet it doesn't work? Sorry that's such a generic description. Maybe post a screenshot?

 

This is completely ridiculous. Could not find a better word.

When you buy a new car do you run the engine at 6000 RPM (or whatever the redline is) for 18 hours to test the engine stability?


--

 

As requested.




Another question.

How do I know if I have installed the correct drivers from the acer website? Would the laptop still work? Seriously, Acer doesn't seem newbie friendly.

 

Okay so Windows is reporting it has detected a NIC but no drivers have been installed. Did you uninstall it from your system? Go to support.acer.com and download the right driver. It should be a Realtek, Broadcom, Intel or something along those lines. If you install the appropriate LAN driver that icon with the yellow icon for the ethernet controller will disappear and appear under network adapters.

 

As far as I recall I haven't. I don't mess with stuff like that normally, only to install new drivers. So, I don't see how I have managed to do that. Does windows keep a log of changes somewhere?

Really, thank you so much for all the help. I really appreciate it.

Edit: Installed the only one there which was Broadcom. Also used the tool for detecting which drivers you need. It's working fine now.

 

It should but it only goes as far back as Windows was installed. Good to hear, again what I think happened was you got a bad image from Acer. Most likely they messed up the Windows 7 install (happens once in a few laptops). Did you already make your recovery discs?

 

Unfortunately, I did not back up my system yet. I will be doing them later this evening

If, in the case that the install was messed up by Acer, is there anything I could do about it? Is there anything I should look out for in the future that could lead to the machine having a shorter lifespan? Could this potentially mess up my system beyond repair? Apologies for all the questions.

I don't really want to unnecessarily send it back to my supplier, as apart from the slight issues, I'm incredibly happy with the machine.