Need help fixing constant notebook crashes/blue screens of death

hey everyone, I am currently having some problems with my laptop (Dell Inspiron 1501/running on Windows XP) and I was wondering if anyone could give me some help or advice on what I should do.

Basically I went on a short vacation leaving my laptop at home and when I came back earlier today I tried logging on, but every single time I logged on the laptop would go directly to the blue screen of death, forcing me to restart it every single time.

So far, the only thing I have been able to do is to start the laptop in safe mode and then go to run and do msconfig in order to disable a lot of the startup software that start upon me logging into my computer. After that I was able to finally log into my account, but only after about 10 tries, because each time I logged on the computer would now just freeze instead.

I also tried to do a system restore on both the normal and safe modes, but I was not able to do that at all. Every time I would get to the last point in the system restore, I would try to click next, but it would not let me click it for some reason.


Another thing I noticed is that the internet only works half the time, a lot of the time it will just say that I cannot connect or something like that even though my internet connection is fine.

Finally, I've tried looking at the hardware a bit, but honestly I'm really not that great with computers, so I would not know what to do. Also, I believe it may be a hardware problem, and it may have something to do with downloading some torrents, as that was the only thing I was doing before I left on my vacation.


I would really appreciate any help or advice that anyone has out there for me. I need my laptop for school and work and I am very worried about what has happend. Thanks a lot everyone.

 

Information given on a blue screen can sometimes help understand the error. Do you see any specific error codes or messages ?

 

Is your data backed up? You should always have it backed up. That way if anything goes wrong, you're covered. Also, it makes it easy to reinstall Windows if you have to. What you're describing, though, sounds like it's probably software-related. What antivirus software do you have, and have you run a scan recently?

Thanks.

 

usual question: is there a memory.dmp file in the windows directory, or any minidumps in the windows\minidumps\ subdirectory? if so, zip it and upload it here, the reason of the BSOD will be recorded there.

also look in the event log: righclick My Computer, choose Manage, and there you should be able to view the event history log - especially look at system and application log. you may find there errors related to the crash.

 

UPDATE:


The blue screen error I usually get is 0x0000008 or something along those lines, it usually talks about drivers and backing stuff up.

I also went to computer management to check where the errors came from, and almost every single time it came from ati2mtag, what I believe is one of the driver files.

Does anyone know what I should do?

 

Looks like an ATI catalyst driver. When was the last time you updated this.

Uninstall the ATI drivers, then reinstall them. When you you uninstall, make sure windows deletes the drivers. See if there is any updated versions to the ones you have.

 

Is there any way you could give me more information on how to uninstall/reinstall the ATI catalyst driver. I've never done it before and I don't want to make a bigger mess than what I have right now.

I would really appreciate if anyone could give me more of a step by step process on how to do this.

Thanks a lot everyone

 

Read this.

 

Hey....I tried using that site and it wouldnt let me do anything with the new driver update, it said my driver was different or something. Just so every one knows, but video card is a Radeon Xpress 1150

 

OK, but are you now able to boot normally with the standard vga drivers.

If so, we can at least say the ati driver is the problem

Then, rather than using and modifying the ati drivers, go to dell and download the latest video driver and use those.

 

Remember to try and post "all" faults with windows even if it seems like a slot machine effect, this can sometimes mean a ram card problem.