My PC Died.

[French]

So yeah... blue screen at boot. Excellent.

I have no money AT ALL atm, so need to try find some way of fixing it for free.

I don't know when I'll be back, but yeah... sorry =) Spreeez and zolt will be covering me while i'm gone in twl & cb etc.

I'll maintain the core website from work. Best of luck to the CA team in WOGL in case i don't get around much :P

[Brambles]

Take out the ram stick by stick and try to boot with the remaining.

[French]

Thanks; any other tips?

Otherwise ima have to take the hdd to a pc shop and get em to recover whatever they can, then format and reinstall everything?

[Brambles]

Before you take it to a pc shop you should try to attach the hard drive through a friend's computer first, see if you can recover important stuff that way . Chances are it's either faulty memory or, less likely, a dead mobo. It's also worth a try booting off onboard graphics and taking your card out.
How far into boot does it happen? If it's later you may be able to run a bootable cd of memtest and it stands a change of being software. If it's early it's definitely hardware.

[French]

it happens during the little horizontal scrollbar before you get the vista login page.

Error:
"***STOP: 0x00000000A (0x00000000, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x80C20613)"

I spoke to Novatech, the makers of my pc. They told me to check this out:
Create/perform a memory test and understand results(updated) - Novatech Community Forums
You receive a "Stop 0x0000000A" error message in Windows XP

I'm inclined to take your advice rather than theirs, as i have no winrar available to me, and the MS support page acts like i can still get into my system, which i cant, so it can't be my problem right? Also its talking about XP, not vista.

Daaaaave help :P

[Brambles]

Right, good news is that if it's on the loading screen, chances are it's software. Try booting into safe mode (I think on Vista you spam F8 when it's loading then select "Safe Mode with Networking"). Hopefully as it runs with only essential systems drivers it'll run. You can then try a system restore to a few days back. Have you recently updated graphics drivers? Whether you have or haven't it's probably worth getting the new ones off the site and installing them in safe mode if it'll let you as they could be corrupt.

Actually, that Novatech suggestion was exactly what I suggested with the memtest. You'll have to create it on a friend's (or work) computer. I'd suggest using 7zip rather than winrar as winrar is, ironically, fail. Download the iso from memtest, unrar with 7zip, burn to a cd with imgburn then boot up your computer with the cd in the drive. It'll do a load of random checks on your ram to see if it's gone dodgy. But I wouldn't bother until you've tried the safe mode thing.

Have you changed anything else about your computer in the last couple of days? Installed drivers or programs?

[French]

idk tbh. Naomi was on it when it crashed -.-

I've tried booting in safe mode, and a system restore. Neither work, as they both blue screen before they get very far.

Utter phail. Idk what to do, maybe I can do what you said and just remove the ram one by one, to see if it's just a dodgy stick? I don't know anyone with 7zip or winrar, so that's gonna be kinda hard.

[Brambles]

Well 7zip is free and tiny. You can also get 7zip portable which you can put on a pen drive so you don't need to install it, and imgburn can be run off a memory stick too.

Hmmm, you don't have a Vista disk either, do you? If anyone you know has one you could try booting into the recovery console and trying bootrec or fixboot.

It is sounding more and more like it could be a memory problem though. Try booting up on just one stick of ram. Then try a different one. Hopefully that's the case as ram is cheap as anything.

Also, try unplugging everything from your computer. Take out memory sticks, cds in drives, printers, scanners and just boot with a power cable and monitor plugged in. I've had a couple of problems that have been caused by having my USB stick in when booting.

But definitely try this ram, that's pretty much the main cause of BSODs at startup. Let us know how you get on.

[French]

will try again tonight. I've brought my HDD into work to get it backed up so i can fuck around more after that.

We'll seeee =)

Also, anyone noticed the number of this thread is 666? It just had to be....

[gameboyfan]

blue screen doesn't mean your pc is dead. it means either your hdd is dead or your windows or any other os got corrupt.