My W7 PC just had a spontaneous blue screen followed by a reboot. It now hangs at the ‘starting windows’ screen. Will reboot in safe mode. What do I do? I haven’t been in desktop support for 20 years 🙁

If you can reboot in safe mode do so, copy all your important stuff over to a hard drive, then start playing with it. What did you do to break it?

As mogrim said.
Try booting to last known good and restore to an earlier date if you have adjusted the operating system. If you haven’t updated any drivers, downloaded any updates or deleted any programs then it maybe a hardware problem in which case start with the memory modules. If it has two memory modules then try reinstalling them one at a time to see if one has failed.

Aahh bollix. I enabled the mic for Skype in the IDT application. I then got what sounded like feedback. The machine then blue screened and rebooted. After that it just hangs.

Pull all your USB peripherals apart from keyboard and mouse too, it might well boot up fine. Had some oddness like that in W7, plugging them back in after the boot usually works out fine too.

It’s a lappy, there’s nothing plugged in 🙁

Need some STW brains here please. I’ve run through the startup fix routine., deleted the sound drivers, updated the MBR and it still won’t boot. 🙁

Remove the power lead and battery then remove the memory modules through the access panel, leave for a few minutes, reinstall memory and reboot. If more than one memory module install one at a time and reboot

If it’s a software issue (rather than hardware giving up) you could try a system restore back to a time when it was working. One potential fly in the ointment here though; I’m not aware that any System Resore I’ve done on my Windows 7 machine has ever actually completed successfully!

If you BSODed after enabling the mic. in Skype it might be worth simply disabling it in Safe Mode (if Skype’s running on boot up this might explain things).

Start in safe mode and restore to a date you know it worked. This fixed a similar problem on my laptop.

Hmmm, thanks gents. I don’t have a restore point to go back to and I’ve disabled Skype and the mic… Same problem. Why would you think it’s a RAM issue?

The problem with computers is that it could be a myriad of things and really hard to track down. If it’s a memory issue I’d have expected the BIOS to have picked this up during boot up; most computers boot up in ‘Quick Boot’ mode which avoid slow memory checks, you could disable quick boot in the bios and see if it picks up a memory issue.

If it’s booting in Safe Mode though I’d have though that it was most likely to be a driver issue (Safe Mode runs with minimum drivers) or some other software issue. Do you have auto-update enabled? I have seen updates to unpleasant things.

A BSOD should give some (not very human readable) information about what’s caused it so you might be able to Google it.

I’m resigned to doing a reinstallation 🙁 Just need to find some media now. No one seems to supply backup media anymore. GRRRR.

boblo – Member
Hmmm, thanks gents. I don’t have a restore point to go back to and I’ve disabled Skype and the mic… Same problem. Why would you think it’s a RAM issue?

Most BSOD’s are memory related. Removing the memory is simple and nothing to afraid of. A screw or 2 for the cover then release the clips either side of the memory module and it spring up. Refitting is locate the memory in the slot, it’s keyed so will only go in one way. Press down until it clicks in.

Well thanks for your feedback chaps. A day and half of faffing later, it’s back up and running. I tried every which way to repair instead of a new install but there was no avoiding it in the end.

Just reinstalling and setting everything back up again now <sigh> f..ing PC’s…. 🙁