May need some help..

OK, I work at a technology office in my school, and I thought fixing computers can never be impossible.

But I really do need help, as all I try to do fails.

Here is how this goes.

1. One day, my laptop will not turn on, can't do anything as it won't turn on.

2. I sent it to the US, paying a huge amount on shipping to get the motherboard replaced anyway for the sandy bridge chipset recall. ( I was one of the few lucky ones to get it before the recall. )

3. It comes back with a new MB, I also upgrade my screen to the 95% gamut.

4. As expected, a new MB = windows fresh install, so I boot ubuntu and back my data to an external.

5. BSODs like crazy, safe mode = BSOD : irql not less or equal
system repair = can't even boot into it, BSOD
USB Boot Drive = BSOD at "Starting Windows"
Recovery disc for Win 7 = BSOD : paged fault in non paged area

I can't do anything to it, I even wiped my drive and clean installed Ubuntu, it works fine without a hitch. Even ran diagnostics within Ubuntu, all pass. But if I try to boot anything related to Windows, it will BSOD.

I really don't want to send my laptop again, as it will cost me another few hundred dollars. To be honest I'm out of options, does anybody have an idea on how to get Windows to work on this at all?

 

hmm sounds like another amd 6970m bad card problem. ask your reseller to send you a new graphics card and tell them that you will send the one you have back to them, if you still have warranty.

 

Oh, were there many with 6970m problems?

I didn't visit the forums for some time..

Can you enlighten me on what those problems were?..

 

Does Windows even boot at all? If you can, run WhoCrashed and post the dumps as they'll be more specific.

If you're booting fine in Ubuntu, it doesn't sound as though it's hardware related. You could try running something similar to memtest in Ubuntu to check if you're having memory troubles. Otherwise it sounds as though it could be video card related- but that should affect both Windows and Linux.

 

Nope, doesn't boot at all. I can't even run whocrashed.

Well, the depot ruled that I have a bad stick of RAM, and they pulled it out for me, so I'm assuming the other 3 dimms are fine..

This is very disappointing. Right after I send my laptop for it to get fixed, there is a hardware problem..

But in Ubuntu, the graphics card seems to be fine..

 

Oh, and if it helps, I updated the BIOS and the EC to the latest version..

 

"irql not less or equal" usually means there's some problem with the RAM. Linux (if the software is installed) can adapt to faulty RAM, but I'm not sure if that's installed by default in ubuntu. I'd try borrowing some ram from another computer temporarily and seeing if it boots. If you can't do that, RAM is pretty cheap, so buying 2 sticks wouldn't be too expensive and might solve the problem. I'd run memtest for a while to see if that's the case, though.

EDIT: found out that the BadRAM software I linked to is part of the linux kernel. So, it's there, which may explain why ubuntu works so well.

 

yeah i was looking and you could get decent ram for $25 1333mhz 4gb

 

I solved this,

I had trusted the factory for testing my RAM, as they even "allegedly" pulled out a dimm saying that it was faulty.

It turns out there was another stick of RAM that was faulty, and it was causing all sorts of errors.

Now I can't trust the factory... I threw away the allegedly bad RAM, but who knows, they might have pulled out the wrong RAM.

Anyways, this problem has been solved. I am going to start windows install in a while, I'll post the results here in case anyone is wondering.