Uh, oh. BSOD - fear the worst . .

[expat]

Ironically, trying to restore a frozen iPad earlier this week when hooking up to iTunes I began getting these blue screen stop messages requiring a reboot.

These blue screens kept popping up after about 10 min - whether in FSX or not - and as of today the PC will not boot at all.

Have read this can be due to many things, e.g., driver, hardware or registry conflicts; memory faults or, gulp, HDD failure (or about to fail, and before all can be saved . .). Difficult to isolate the root cause and also to fix, as far as I have Googled.

Tonight when home I will open the case to check, e.g., any fans stopped, excessive dirt/dust (room was just repainted/carpeted) and removing-re-fitting the GFX card and ram sticks - just in case that does anything.

Any guidance from others who have experienced similar problems appreciated. Losing some of the custom FS stuff (most payware backed up on an ext HD thank goodness) is bad enough but lots of essential household/family/financial/tax docs etc is such a bummer.

Don't have system specs to hand but off the top of my head -

XP Pro
3 gig RAM
Asus MB
E 6800 Duo Core intel 3.0 (something like this)
250 gid HD

Thanks

expat

[dvj]

Have you tried a system restore to an earlier time?

[expat]

Yes, twice. But each time it said it was not possible to restore to an earlier date. Never was sure why it lets you do this sometimes but not other times (and when it might be needed most!).

[Dumonceau]

Tried booting in safe mode?? After powering up, start hitting the F8 key like a mad man. Select safe mode (no networking) and when in safe mode go to the eventviewer to see what happened. At least that should give you a possibility to rectify thing.

[Dev One]

Could be a PSU going down on one of the voltage rails. Before changing my PSU recently I was getting blackouts - it would restart itself & looking in the event viewer it said Kernel power loss (well something like that). The replacement PSU is still an old one & I had another blackout yesterday when using Gmax after a couple of months being OK, so maybe that PSU capacitor is on its way out too!
HTH
Keith

[expat]

Good suggestions - will try these over the weekend (need to find a way into safe mode to do anything; have had a PSU at fault in the past) - thanks guys.

[Dangerousdave26]

Here is something else to look for.

This error code speaks to USB devices. Remove all USB devices and see if it happens.

specifically one of the devices is


CAUSE
This behavior may occur if you use a Logitech mouse and the version of the Logitech MouseWare program that is installed on the computer is outdated. This behavior is known to occur with Logitech MouseWare versions 9.10 and 9.24.


RESOLUTION
To resolve this behavior, remove the Logitech MouseWare program from the computer and then update to the latest version of Logitech MouseWare.

For more information about how to remove Logitech MouseWare from the computer, see the program documentation or contact Logitech. For more information about how to obtain and install the latest version of Logitech MouseWare, contact Logitech at the following Logitech Web site:
http://www.logitech.com

[expat]

This error code speaks to USB devices. Remove all USB devices and see if it happens.

Have yanked all USB and other attachments except for main screen and it booted (!). So I think we may be on to something. I have a Microsoft wireless mouse with the little USB dongle which caused another boot related issue previously solved by Googling and finding it needs to go in the USB slot on the back of the box instead of the front, which fixed that problem. The driver - most frequent cause of this error - should be automatically updated with all other MS updates but heck, you never know. Other attachments are a Western Digital external drive, Saitek X-52, and a digital sound output (Plug & Play and has worked fine for many years). Will do some more A-B trial and error testing (plugging things back in one by one and waiting to see if any more BSODs) and report back.

You guys have probably saved me a huge amount of time (I don't have). Many thanks and regards,

expat