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#1
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has
been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat |
#2
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
"Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat Forgot to add, that I did a system restore to Before the Ages of Empires game was installed. I forgot to uninstall first though... Pat |
#3
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
"Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat The symptoms all point to software, not hardware. If it was me, I'd go back to basics. Backup everything you can in safe mode (hope it has good backups) and wipe the machine clean with a fresh install of XP. But I'm not a good example, as I reinstall XP every few months. Tom |
#4
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
"Tom Scales" wrote in message . .. "Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat The symptoms all point to software, not hardware. If it was me, I'd go back to basics. Backup everything you can in safe mode (hope it has good backups) and wipe the machine clean with a fresh install of XP. But I'm not a good example, as I reinstall XP every few months. Tom Tom, That was the one answer I wasn't hoping for... Hope he still has all his disks. Thanks, Pat |
#5
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
"Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... "Tom Scales" wrote in message . .. "Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat The symptoms all point to software, not hardware. If it was me, I'd go back to basics. Backup everything you can in safe mode (hope it has good backups) and wipe the machine clean with a fresh install of XP. But I'm not a good example, as I reinstall XP every few months. Tom Tom, That was the one answer I wasn't hoping for... Hope he still has all his disks. Thanks, Pat All you need is the Dell XP disk. The drivers are downloadable. In fact, for $15-20 you can get the latest XP SP2 Dell disk off Ebay and save yourself the trouble of upgrading to SP2. Just make sure you get the same OS that it currently has a legal license for. Tom |
#6
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
"Tom Scales" wrote in message ... "Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... "Tom Scales" wrote in message . .. "Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat The symptoms all point to software, not hardware. If it was me, I'd go back to basics. Backup everything you can in safe mode (hope it has good backups) and wipe the machine clean with a fresh install of XP. But I'm not a good example, as I reinstall XP every few months. Tom Tom, That was the one answer I wasn't hoping for... Hope he still has all his disks. Thanks, Pat All you need is the Dell XP disk. The drivers are downloadable. In fact, for $15-20 you can get the latest XP SP2 Dell disk off Ebay and save yourself the trouble of upgrading to SP2. Just make sure you get the same OS that it currently has a legal license for. Tom Tom, Just in case he can't find his, I'll take my new Dell XP Home SP2 disk and download all the latest drivers for the 4550 . Worked great for another XP Home SP2 install and saves a lot of time too. Gonna ditch Norton AV too and go with free AVG while I'm at it. Guess I need to hold a mini-PC Do's and Don'ts camp for his kid's. Already spent a lot of time resurrecting their Dim 4600 at their mom's house. I'm also thinking about creating one administrator account for me and one user/guest account for everyone else. They now each have their own account, which is a pain to do any disk maintenance/cleanups on. Any thoughts on that Tom? Thanks, Pat |
#7
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
Pat Conover wrote: My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat How about RAM? www.memtest.org |
#8
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
"Tom Scales" wrote in message
... "Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... "Tom Scales" wrote in message . .. "Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat The symptoms all point to software, not hardware. If it was me, I'd go back to basics. Backup everything you can in safe mode (hope it has good backups) and wipe the machine clean with a fresh install of XP. But I'm not a good example, as I reinstall XP every few months. Tom Tom, That was the one answer I wasn't hoping for... Hope he still has all his disks. Thanks, Pat All you need is the Dell XP disk. The drivers are downloadable. In fact, for $15-20 you can get the latest XP SP2 Dell disk off Ebay and save yourself the trouble of upgrading to SP2. Just make sure you get the same OS that it currently has a legal license for. Tom that's not all you need. you also need 5-6 spare hours to do the job. i suggest that you try a system restore to a point in time far before the recent software install. since you can start in safe mode then see if you can also successfully run a system restore while in there... start-allprograms-acessories-systemtools-systemrestore more details he http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...w_03may19.mspx |
#9
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
"Christopher Muto" wrote in message news:1Ev1h.3021$Gg5.1371@trndny02... "Tom Scales" wrote in message ... "Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... "Tom Scales" wrote in message . .. "Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat The symptoms all point to software, not hardware. If it was me, I'd go back to basics. Backup everything you can in safe mode (hope it has good backups) and wipe the machine clean with a fresh install of XP. But I'm not a good example, as I reinstall XP every few months. Tom Tom, That was the one answer I wasn't hoping for... Hope he still has all his disks. Thanks, Pat All you need is the Dell XP disk. The drivers are downloadable. In fact, for $15-20 you can get the latest XP SP2 Dell disk off Ebay and save yourself the trouble of upgrading to SP2. Just make sure you get the same OS that it currently has a legal license for. Tom that's not all you need. you also need 5-6 spare hours to do the job. i suggest that you try a system restore to a point in time far before the recent software install. since you can start in safe mode then see if you can also successfully run a system restore while in there... start-allprograms-acessories-systemtools-systemrestore more details he http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...w_03may19.mspx I do agree with Chris. Don't jump into the reformat until you try everything. tom |
#10
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Dimension 4550 BSOD on Boot
"Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... "Tom Scales" wrote in message . .. "Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message ... My brother's Dim 4550 starting doing a BSOD after booting, your computer has been shutdown to protect it...runs for about 15 seconds before shutting down. Stock 4550, 512MB RAM, XP Home (maybe up to date?). One of his kids had just loaded Ages of Empires III on the machine when it started and forgot to tell Dad. It boots and runs in safe mode, but always crashes when booted normally. I thought a power, heat or HD problem. I cleaned the machine, which was filthy with all the vents completely blocked. Thought that was the problem, heat and Intel shutdown, but no luck. I ran the Dell diagnostics on the HD, MB and video card and all seemed to pass. It has the stock NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420 video card, same as my 4550. Ran defrag on the C drive, which was badly fragmented and will run a chkdsk today. Have to check the startups too, since who the Dell knows what's been DL and installed on this. Any suggestions from my favorite DellBots? Otherwise, it's pull all the cards and test one by one... Guess I'm looking for some shortcuts. Thanks, Pat The symptoms all point to software, not hardware. If it was me, I'd go back to basics. Backup everything you can in safe mode (hope it has good backups) and wipe the machine clean with a fresh install of XP. But I'm not a good example, as I reinstall XP every few months. Tom Tom, That was the one answer I wasn't hoping for... Hope he still has all his disks. Thanks, Pat Boot in safe mode and try disabling everything in the startup folder...then attempt a normal boot. |
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