Blue Screen of Death Compaq Presario

My friend, how could I start it... Its a Compaq ok? Its the kind of machine that comes "encapsulated" with everything, ok? It means that it should have some kind of "recovery disk", a CD or DVD with the operational system with everything preconfigured to work with this machine. If you have it, you should put it into the drive and follow the instructions in the screen. If you dont have it, well, maybe that's why you were given it. By the situation you described, the best idea that comes to me is a complete windows re-installation. If you have access to a copy of windows XP you could use it. My Dell, for example, came with a full WinXP what means that when it dies or something like this, I could be able to install it in another machine. If it can be reinstalled, you may have a life extension for it. But keep in mind that if you have such error, it is possible that you have a hard drive failure. If its a laptop, maybe its really time to say goodbye. After all, Are you in USA? Computers are not that expensive there. I presume that purchasing an operational system alone for reinstallation in your machine and a fix with hard drive replacement would be expensive comparing to purchasing a new machine.

Long time, no see.

Several things I do (will try to keep it simple)...

1) Remove your RAM (link) stick and replace it with a spare. If no spare available, simply take it out and lightly clean the contacts with the a solid peice of smooth cardboard. Handle the stick only by its edges and avoid skin contact with the connectors that run along one edge. Insert the stick back into the motherboard, this time using another slot than the one it was originally in. Usually a motherboard has two or more slots for RAM sticks.

3) Remove/disconnect any external USB/PCMCIA cards (link) from the outside of the laptop. Include any external mouse that may be connected and use the pad to navigate (assuming you are able to start the damned operating system).

4) Free yourself from Microsoft Winblowz and and an empty wallet...use a LINUX operating system. Ubuntu flavour is excellent for dummies. Free software is available usually in computer magazines...just check them out to see what they have.

The system is telling you it's not happy, and that you need to try various options such as checking the hard-drive integrity (Run CHKDSK /F). It's so unhappy (your getting the bsod - much dreaded, but less frequently met thesedays) that you need to do this in 'dos mode'. When you power the thing on it may (if you're lucky) quickly show (in the first minute or so) which keys top press in order to get the machine to boot into dos. It's normally something like F8, but I vaguely recall having a Compaq years ago that was a complete ****. Press the right key when the machine is firing up and it will enter dos mode instead of Windows.

If you can get into dos and see a nice prompt (C:\>), you can try a range of things. Chkdsk, scandisk, restore and that type of command are all useable with 'switches' (like the /F bit) to modify how they act. I don't think the capital letters make any difference. Try doing precisely what it asked - type Chkdsk/f and hit return. It probably won't solve things right away so you may have to go thru all three. I forget which utilities are available but I'd try those first. Check this;

http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/booting-to-dos/32030.html

I'm a numb-nuts on this compared to others here, so usual disclaimers apply.

Hi TC,

I'm not an IT expert (don't believe they exist) but have had the usual share of PC problems to overcome. Had this experience on 2 recent events, one was trying to see if a hard drive which appeared to have failed could run in another machine (both using W98) to possibly extract some data, and the other was a new hard drive setup with XP to see if it would run in an old W98 machine.

In the first case, when your blue screen message appeared, went into BIOS to see if the hard drive was recognised - it wasn't, so that answered the question.

In the other, the hard drive was identified in BIOS just the machine couldn't cope with XP operating system.

You might just check in BIOS that the hard drive is being recognised in startup sequence. Maybe its a bad hard drive?

Good luck

Keep tapping the f11 key as soon as boot up begins. That will get you into restore mode. Do what the screen says.

While booting tap F8 repeatedly till you get to options for safe mode. If it boots in safe mode open Run. Type chkdsk /f (notice space). It will tell you it cant untill restart type Y. Do a restart and see if it runs through check disk.

If you cant get into safe mode odds are its a hardware problem.

If you want a good free operating system download Ubuntu and install.

Steve

GA bwire.

You can try holding the F8 key while booting then select with arrow keys " Use Last Known Good Configuration", if no joy then do so repeatedly about ten times.

If the machine will boot to a dos prompt (without the menu options such as 'Last known good configuration' etc), can he navigate to the appropriate folder and run system restore directly ? I did that not so long ago on a machine running ME, using the command "restore". ME will offer up the last 5 restore points to chose from (unless you previously tweaked it to offer more), and it worked for me on that occasion. Don't remember what (if any) switches I added. If the machine has XP will trying to run rstrui work, or is that some kind of pseudo dos thing ? As my question reveals, I'm a bit in the dark about it all as well !

If the machine has XP will trying to run rstrui work, or is that some kind of pseudo dos thing ? As my question reveals, I'm a bit in the dark about it all as well !

Suggest if cmd prompt is available in XP first try run; "sfc /scannow" , Windows built-in registry scan/restorer.

If its anything older than XP I wouldn't go on the net with it. Thats like throwing a sheep to the wolves. You would be riddled with viruses in no time.

Steve

Using a dial-up connection to MSN and direct to Microsoft should be safe enough...of course one could direct link to Compaq and update the drivers that may be causing the BSOD if possible too.

I say thanks to you all. Nice to see many of the old hands (and by old a mean it literally ) around. Cheers to you all.

Will not boot to command prompt. System 32 partition yadayada ya. does not do sh^t except tell me Ntfs.sys blah blah blah.

Gonna drop it off at the local geek shop and see if I can persuade someone to do a favor. Will let you know how I fare.

Thank you again for all the great input.

Via con dios.

cr3