Having some major problems with windows 7 on my sager np8170!

At first, everytime i tried right clicking the desktop and choosing screen resolution, explorer.exe would stop working and restart. I tracked down the problem path with event viewer and ntdll.dll was the culprit.

I tried the following steps.

Tried using my windows recovery disc to find and fix the problem, it found no problems

Tried running scandisc to check for bad sectors, it finished and fixed a few DLL files that werent ntdll.dll.

After that i tried right clicking on my desktop and opening screen resolution again. Explorer.exe didnt crash this time, it simply does nothing when i choose screen resolution.

So now i am at a loss as to what to do. I don't have an external hdd right now to back up my 400 some gb of data on my internal hdd, so i dont wanna do a complete windows reinstall. The stupid windows repair utility finds NO PROBLEMS when it's obvious this ntdll.dll file is the problem.

Is there some way i can force windows to reinstall without deleting all my data files? I remember you could do that in windows xp, but windows 7 only lets you do it if it detects some problem, and it's not detecting the problem.

The notebook is stable for now, i just cant get into screen resolution when i right click on the desktop. I might order a 1 tb usb hdd from amazon soon so i can back all my stuff up and completely fresh reinstall windows. But i'd like to avoid that if anyone here has some clue as to is going on.

 

^have you tried reinstalling Nvidia WHQL drivers?

 

Just throwing out the regular diagnostic tests... Grab UBCD and try the HDD diagnostics and memtest86+ to make sure neither of those are having issues. If they show up with errors, let us know. (I think we're your reseller, right?)

 

It sounds like either a virus or other malware has taken hold in your system, or you're having hard drive failure/corruption. Either one can be nasty. To check for the first, I'd suggest running Malwarebytes. For the latter, Hiren's boot CD has a whole range of diagnostics you can try to run.

Also, try running a Windows restore back to before you noticed the problem.

 

Well i ended up completely reinstalling windows 7, fixed all my problems and i managed to keep all my documents. Was a pain in the reinstalling everything but it's running way better now.

Did i mention i was up ALL NIGHT fixing it?

 

^^^^ Yes it can take 'all night long' to reinstall everything. I do this myself every 6 months or so even if there is no real issue.

I think we all like the smoothness of things in a fresh windows install
_

 

Yea actually, my boot up time was over a minute before now it's back down to 45 seconds. It's nice. Also there were a bunch of other minor problems going on that i had no idea of the cause, they totally went away once i reinstalled.

I think i might invest in one of these.

Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1 TB USB 3.0/2.0 Ultra Portable External Hard Drive (Black): Electronics

So i can do a reinstall again next time with even more ease.

 

This is why I use drive imaging software. You can save yourself a lot of time and effort and you don't have to do a reinstall again.

 

Instead of doing that, I use Drive Snapshot right after I have completed a fresh Windows install and then I do another image a little later on. This way I do not need to do a time consuming reinstall because restoring the image does exactly the same thing.

 

Yes that is true. I do recommend this, absolutely! Many here on the forum unfortunately have not done this.

Also, one that many have used on the forum here is in the link below...

Acronis True Image Home 2012

Thanks for the info!
_

 

Another option is to just get into the habit of partitioning the drives such that the original partition only has your original/important windows files (plus buffer space), and all other media/games/etc are allotted to the other partitions. This way, if something does unfortunately go wrong with Windows and reinstall, you wouldn't have to go through the hassle of re-installing all your games and other such software, as only the original partition would be affected.