Blue screen advice.

[gingernut]

Evening all, I'm a little bit of a computer thick' so please be gentle.

My computer (Acer 5332 laptop windows 7 home premium) suddenly switched itself off whilst I was watching BBCi player.

When I switched it back on, I was greeted with a buzzing sound and a blue screen, saying, amongst other things "DRIVER IRQL-NOT-LESS-OR-EQUAL.

The laptop was operable in safe mode, and eventually I was able to resore it to a date in October, via "System Restore."

It seems ok now, but do I need to take any further action to prevent future trouble?

Many thanks
ginge

[Paraffin Budgie]

I was getting exactly that a few weeks ago. It seemed to be caused by the latest version of Kies, which is the Samsung desktop software for their mobiles.

It may be coincidence, but I haven't had the problem since uninstalling it. Forums suggest that Samsung's S3 driver within Kies may be to blame.

Have you installed anything new lately?

[Milo Minderbinder]

Kies has always been an unstable bit of software.....to be honest I thought Samsung had replaced it with the advent of Win7

[gingernut]

Not intentionally, was all working until last, switched off computer, and windows updates were installed automatically, got the blue screen again this morning, have restored to a previous date again tonight, and working again.

Have tried to stop windows automatically storing updates, via Programs/Windows Update/Settings.

Interestingly, my MacAfee has stopped working to.

[Milo Minderbinder]

try running the updates one by one

you should be able to work out which one is failing
In the last few weeks there have been a couple of bad updates which are unstable

[gingernut]

have now taken back the computer to original facory settings and seems to be working ok, trouble is, have lost my microsoft office - don't s'pose you now how to get it back on the cheap _ I work for the NHS but believe that loophole has been closed- gingerette is a student:O

[Milo Minderbinder]

Hmmm
tricky one.....the NHS terminated its volume licence with M$ a while ago and supposedly the home user deal died - see Thousands of NHS staff stripped of Microsoft Office | Enterprise | News | PC Pro (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/359836/thousands-of-nhs-staff-stripped-of-microsoft-office)
Yet I know nurses who have purchased home user disks recently and at present I'm working on an NHS site upgrading several hundred machines - including volume licence versions of Office 10
You need to talk to your IT manager over that one. It may be the indivdual PCTs now have their own volume agreements

If your daughter has an @xxx.ac.uk e-mail address she should qualify for some heavy discounts on Office from Software for Students - but the deals seem missing from the website except for this (which is more expensive than they usually offer)
Microsoft Office 2010 Software - Software4Students (http://www.software4students.co.uk/t/brands/microsoft-office-2010)
it could be they're clearing the decks in readiness for the next version, due imminently

Of course if you still have the product key from the installation its possible to legally download the software from Digital River. Do you have it? And which version of Office was it?

[mixture]

don't s'pose you now how to get it back on the cheap

Office 2010 Home and Student edition is only £80 on Amazon, not exactly going to break the bank is it ? :E

Plus for that £80, the EULA allows you to:
you may install one copy of the software on up to three licensed devices in your household for use by people for whom that is their primary residence


Bloomin good value I'd say ! So off you trot to Amazon ....

[Paraffin Budgie]

Or try Libre Office. It's free and is, in my experience anyway, pretty compatible with Microsoft Office (both ways)

[chrisp666]

I might be able to assist.

[Ancient Observer]

Bloody Microsoft updates!

Allowed them all to run the other night.....there were a lot of them......(XP, SP3, on spare desktop, kept for when this one dies)

Following morning, blue screen of death! .......Which hung around for long enough to tell me it was dead, and then went black.

The "recovery disk" wot I made a couple of years ago doesn't seem to fix it, from start up from disk, so question of getting local pc man to try to fix it, or give up as bloody Gates shower wont support XP for much longer.

Huh!!

[green granite]

Have you tried doing a roll back from the safe mode Ancient Observer?

[gingernut]

Thanks for the help, have downloaded LibreOffice (the 3.5.7 version as the reviews says it has less glitches) and it seems to work well so far.

[waveskimmer]

I have had this on my Asus netbook,downloaded 13 windows updates,next morning blue screen "unable to connect to drivers" it said then went black,still trying to sort it.

[Ancient Observer]

GG thanks. I couldn't do anything. Couldn't get to safe mode. On start up, Only f12 that I could use.. The delete stuff was available, but beyond my wit. It would not repair from the disk, so I had to format C, reload windoze and am slowly building back stuff like drivers. Lucky I had my windoze number - the 5 x 5 thing, and the recovery disk. All the photos etc were already on newer pc, and back up. Still have the wrong bloody keyboard settings. Probably from some uppity colony. How do I get my Brit keyboard back? - I'll google for it. I wonder if Mr & Mrs Gates will give me my money back?

[oldbeefer]

In XP, Start, Control Panel, Regional and Language, Languages, Details, change both to UK.

[Ancient Observer]

oldbeefer.
Much obliged.
Thanks
AO

Not a part of control panel I've ever noticed before.

[Donkey497]

Has anyone ever come across a "White Screen of Death"?

My aged, but previously reliable Advent laptop running XP professional recently downloaded & installed about 19 different microsoft updates. It was initially fine, but the first time I rebooted after a shutdown, it booted up as normal, except when it finished it went to a white screen with no icons and the mouse cursor disappears.

Ctrl Alt Del has no effect, nor trying Alt+Tab.

If nothing else, I'd like to get the data off the hard drive backed up again.

Any thoughts?

[jimtherev]

Probably teaching grandma to suck eggs, but have you tried to reboot in safe mode? (Keep pounding F8 as soon as the POST screen vanishes.)

[Milo Minderbinder]

"White Screen of Death"?


pull the power lead and the battery, then replace and power up

that should force it to boot cleanly from the "off" state rather than from standby or hibernation

should then start normally. If it doesn't, and you don't get the normal boot screens then the graphics chip is probably fried

what model of Advent is it?

[Ancient Observer]

A tiny addendum to Milo's input. In my non-techie experience, when one pulls a power lead and battery, it is worth leaving them pulled for a while, say, enough time to make a strong cup of tea, at least.
I have no idea why this needs to be so, but I now do this with all my techie problems, (Sky, BT modemrouter as well as pcs), as sometimes taking the lead out and putting it back in a few seconds later doesn't work.