Big time Vista issue omg blue screen

ok, first off. This may or may not be a second life issue, aside from the fact I can not run second life a'tall now because when I try I get a blue screen error.

History: I play unreal tournament on occasion and tonight I decided to play again, so I shut down all my stupid running applications that can/may/do/whatever access internet.. was logging into a server in UT and BANG CRASH! Blue screen
Oh sugar foot I say, (ok I din't say that exactly but.. ) Now fine ok, whatever.. so I reboot.
I attempt to uninstall UT and BANG blue screen error...
Oh nooooooooooooooooooooo.. Ok.. well so i won;t play UT I say to myself... Lemme go online and see waht my sweety is up to.. (whole different issue not ogin to talk about here) anyhow... SL goes to connect guess what... BLUE SCREEN ERROR... saying software or hardware issues.. Ok well I figure I can finish the uninstall right... Nope... guess what.. Blue screen error.... pc shuts down Tarina(her operator) cries.........

Try to load SL again... Blue screen error...

Sooooooooooooooooooo.. I try a repair from the win vista dvd... goes to install and guess what... Blue screen error...

Does anyone have a solution because teh MS assistance does not hep one feakin bit.

Everything looks fine and a memory test in windows vista says memory is ok,
my graphic card driver is up to data as well as my audio and network drivers...

I do not know how to recover from this as each time I try to reinstall windows it shuts me down with blue screen..
Now to those of you saying.. oh you big dummy this is a SL forum, the thing is... I know you people are smart and lack of response from UT forums have sent me here.

If I try to backup my files for a omg I know im going to have to "format" guess what I get when going to the external HD... BLUE SCREEN.. Flashes so fast I cant even tell what it says..

So if anyone out there has a clue or can help PLEASE PLEASE help.

T.S


I am running intel dual w/gforce 8800 1gb ram and what ever else I stuffed inside the case. on win vista

I am not a computer professional but "Tinker" quite a bit. I'd say the problem is:

1. Vista (Sucks, REALLY sucks)
2. Could use more RAM

I am using a Compaq (HP motherboard) with single core AMD, 2gb ram with a 6000 series NVIDIA card and works alright.

Now, My wife is using a dual core AMD Compaq with 2gb RAM and a 6000 series graphics card and has a --- WHOLE WORLD --- of trouble running it on Vista. Freezes, locks up and even the blue screen. She gets so frustrated with it that I'm suprised the keyboard still functions for banging. (Literally)

I can load XP on her machine and it's fast without the problems. I was able to find all the motherboard drivers online, despite not being supported by Compaq.

Last week she wanted to "Try" Vista again so I re-loaded it. (Using the factory restore disks)

GAWD she hates it so much for the trouble and I will probably be asked to reload XP.

I have no idea why SL runs on my own lesser machine with (relatively) no problems, given that mine is a single core processor and hers is dual.

hard to narrow your problem down with info given, the claims against Vista seem to be sporadic. I run Vista and have had zero problems with dual core 4gb ram dual 8800GT vid cards. Just a hint, have you checked your drivers recently?

Try a system restore point a day or two before your problem started. Sounds like some system file is corrupted or damaged.

after using vista i have to say that it works! it works very well once i learned where all the name changes MS did to hide stuff. once you use it for awhile you find it is a decent product the anti-vista camp is just like the anti-XP camp before it i think,it's just more prolific because XP had more users because of the computer boom that happened during XPs reign

Please pay attention to this comment.

I like Vista (on my laptop) fine but I wouldn't attempt to use it in my XP system. The local geeksquad guys at Bestbuy told me that a lot of the bad reputation Vista has gained is from people trying to make it work on machines with older componants. I know the O.P. said they updated some of their drivers and more but there is a lot that can go wrong quickly.

There are two desktops in this house that use Vista. Neither has any problems at all. I think the main reason Vista causes many so much grief is that their machines are running the minimum RAM (1 gig) with all that Aero glitzy stuff enabled. Plus Vista hides a lot of the configurable stuff from you making it hard to find........but it's all there and can be turned off. The two computers in this house have 2 gigs and 3 gigs.

SL says you need 512 megs minimum.......we all know that is not exactly true. Same with Vista. You only have the minimum you are probably going to have trouble.

Yes, this was done, then blue screen.... PC shut down crashed during install of this.
Now I boot and am looking at a black screen and it says
winload.exe is corrupt.

So I guess now I Ilook for my hard drive format tools and blast the bugger..

Also, I was not in a habit of creating restore points in vista, win x yes.. vista no, stupid silly me.. So the only restore point option I had was before a Vista upgrade and as I said... It crashed during install of said restore..

I am not without some knowledge of vista been using it for a year or so and have not really had any issues. This is the first big time issue Ive had with vista... I do nto know why my first program would crash.. and Ive never had a blue screen within vista before..

Im not knocking Vista, I like it.. I just wanted to see if anyone had this happen and how they fixed it, or had a clue what would have caused such a serious crash..


I slide the win cd in and get windows boot manager, says select an operating system to load and vista being th eonly one I push that.. to which nothing happens it reboots itself and I get the boot manager again.



Soooooo...


Now I am just trying to reinstall vista, I believe I will loose anything of course I have not saved, but I think before I was able to save most.

Ive had a bad day and this is so much to deal with....

.

My Vista creates restore points very often. Especially before each Defender and Windows Critical updates. So many restore points that I have to delete all the most recent about once every week and a half or two weeks because it eats up disk space on my Vista operating system partitian. I get at least one restore point every day in fact.

Before you format and reinstall Vista can you not "repair"? It's worth a try anyway.

At this point I can not even get past a boot manager..... I can't do a thing with it...

I can not access windows after the attempt to restore .. it crashed during and ... Im at a loss now because I cna not even get the damn win cd or max cd to boot anthing but the boot manager which wont allow me to do a thing except loop my pc back to the boot manager..

if all fails, install XP

if that fails, your hdd might have died

Yes, I htinnk you are right... I am with the win xp cd now.. crossing fingers... If not.. off to the store I go to buy a new HD... last night bad night for the rl tarina.

A few things you can check. . .

Heat--clear the vent holes, open up the case and blow the dust bunnies out. Is everything that looks like a fan still turning?

Hard drive. Try and run scan disk. Some computers have a built in test in BIOS that will test the hard drive for you without even running an OS

Memory. If you've got two sticks, try running with one stick or the other removed

Check for, and reseat loose cables.

To me it sounds like 1 of a couple things...
1. One of those bluescreen crashes happened when windows was accessing a major BIOS function, causing the imbedded BIOS flash image on the motherboard to become slightly damaged. It's possible for BIOS to pass self-test, post, and boot up, yet still be damaged enough to not function correctly (I've seen it, and lost hair over it). If it's this, the fix is to go to the motherboard manufacturers website, download the flash utility and newest bios for your model, and reflash the bios from a DOS bootable floppy. DANGEROUS if you're a rookie, better to pay the geek squad to do it if not completely sure of what you're doing.

2. Memory - remove and reseat them first. Try it. If that doesn't work, try as suggested using 1 stick only, then the other if that one fails. If one works and the other fails, you got intermittent function on the bad one (ya poofed it). If they BOTh fail i wouldnt think it's the memory. Chances of both sticks failing at once (unless it got hit by lightning) is very slim.

The rebooting early on in the load process, and the freezing before windows ever starts loading is what makes me think the bios might be at fault. It happened to this system not too long ago. After a bad crash, it kept crashing out of windows earlier and earlier until I couldn't load windows at all. Xp repair/reinstall failed immediately. Win2000 install would fail right after specifying the 3rd party harddrive RAID drivers (and install switched to 32bit mode). All low level 16 bit functions worked fine (including installing DOS 6.2 to the harddrive and playing quake 1 on it for hours) and it passed every memory and harddrive test I threw at it. Half a head of grey hair later, I reflashed the BIOS and all was fixed. Found out the new power supply, dual core CPU, and memory I bought to fix it wasn't necessary

I do know when I built the PC I had to flash bios for vista, that I do remember well. I had to buy an external floppy drive as the one I built had none, the motherboard didn't even have a space for it.. (MSI P35 Neo)

I had not checked the memory, and I will do that tonight. As well as check bios version.
I will say this, when I went into BIOS some of my settings were not as they were. The hard drive is new but I know what means nothing my pc runs 24/7 for work and play.

let me climb behind my desk battle the cobwebs and blow it out a bit, reseat memory etc.

Tried booting from a XP cd nuttin there either so I am fairly certain you are on to something with bios and memory...

let me give those thigns a shot and I will let you know. Daughter wants her pc back lol.

blessing to you all I really really appreciate all your help.

I will let you know

my vista has lesser specs than that and runs great!

i don't think the OP's prob is exclusive to vista.

could be a drivers issue on this one as well. from another thread: