Black Screen of Death (BSOD) -- General help on a PCS Desktop

[welchb]

Hi All,

I hope someone on these forums may have some better suggestions than the web.

I have tried searching this and there's many threads however I've not found any that seems to help much so looking for some further suggestions/help from people with better technical knowledge.

ProblemMy wife has a PCS desktop machine (spec below), approx 2 years old now running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit.

It's a general use machine, no gaming or anything fancy, mainly emails, Word docs, Excel, Powerpoint, web browsering, You Tube, iTunes, some video playback, etc....

For the last 3 months or so when the machine starts/boots... it "hangs" with a Black screen and the windows cursor "pointer" only thing on screen --- also other thing is a intermittent flash from HDD light.

NOTE : This does not happen every time the PC boots, but at least once in 10 starts (sometimes more frequent)

To resolve this, is to power off (hold powerbutton for few secs to power down) and then power on again......

'Normally' windows then starts but trys to do a system repair which can take 5-10mins and sometimes does a Restore......
This generally resolves things, however sometimes we have to repeat this power down/start process a couple of times.....

Once's it's recovered it normally starts Windows and is fine, so obviously there's not something fundamental wrong with the PC, however it's getting to be a pain.

I cannot exactly pin point when this issue started and there's been no changes to the PC in terms of hardware upgrades. Some software has been added over time but generally these are standard packages.....

I'm reasonaly tech savvey and have looked at threads on the internet to "update" drivers, as one possible solution --- I'm not really too sure if this is a recommened route so have not tried this yet ??

Any advise/suggestions tips, if someone could suggest I'd really like to hear please ?

It's getting to the point where I'm thinking of re-installing Win7 or possibly even upgrading to Win8 to see if this will solve the issue, however I need to be careful about the data on the PC.

It is networked via homeplugs to the Router and we do have a NAS storage device on the Router so I can make backups.....

Please help !

Thanks,

Brian















Processor (CPU) Intel® Corei5-650 Dual Core (3.20GHz, 4MB Cache) + HD Graphics + Turbo Boost
Motherboard INTEL® DH57JG: H57 Express Chipset, 10-Channel HD Audio, 2x DDR3
Memory (RAM) 4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)
Graphics Card 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GT430 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11
2nd Graphics Card NONE
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive SONY BD-5730S 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£119)
Memory Card Reader NONE
Sound Card ONBOARD 10 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options 8 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Bluetooth & Infrared Options NONE
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Monitor NONE
2nd Monitor NONE
DVI-D & HDMI Monitor Cables NONE
DVI-D & HDMI Monitor Cables NONE 1 x 2 METRE GOLD PLATED V1.4 HDMI CABLE (£8)

 

[kruppsy]

You could try the following:

Re-seat the RAM modules, (carefully!) cleaning the connectors, both on the RAM and the mobo. A wipe with your finger and a gentle blow (Im making it too easy for DeadEyeDuk here!) will suffice. Roll those sleeves up, you don't want static! If you are nervous about doing this there are various tutorials on YouTube.

Same as above for the GPU

Check the CPU fan is working correctly

Update BIOS for your mobo http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Desktop+Boards&ProductLine=Intel%C2%AE+5+Series+Chipset+Boards&ProductProduct=Intel%C2%AE+Desktop+Board+DH57JG&DownloadType=BIOS

Update Drivers for your GPU http://www.geforce.com/drivers

Run a Defrag and Disk Clean Up for good measure

I'd do an OS re-install as a last resort.

Hope this helps and you find a solution

Im sure the big guns will have some more/better suggestions....

 

[vanthus]

Have a look in event viewer,It's normal to have a lot of warnings & errors so best look at the event viewer immediately after the problem occurs,then check if anything is logged for that particular time.
Go to control panel(All control panel items)/performance information and tools/click advanced tools on the left hand side/view performance details in event log.
this will take you to diagnostics-performance & boot /shut down events,It may or may not give a clue to the problem,but worth a try.
If nothing obvious showing there,at the top of the tree on the left hand side,click on custom views/administrative events.
You might get more information that points to something by selecting details/Friendly & XML view,in the event viewer.you could also try selecting "event log online"at the bottom of the page.
Also if getting BSOD's and they disappear too quickly to read,disable automatic restart.to do this type SYSDM.CPL in the Start Search box.
Click the "Advanced" tab and click the "Settings" button under "Startup and Recovery"
Uncheck the option Automatically Restart.

 

[welchb]

thanks both for you suggestions -- I'll certainly follow these up and see if these can solve the problem.

whilst I'll keep my fingers crossed from the research I've done so far it does seem to be a common fault of windows without any exact cause or cure.

I'll post back if your suggestions help, in the mean time any further help/comments/experience is welcome....

Cheers,

Brian

 

[paul1224]

Another option to consider is to try to boot the PC in Safemode just to see whether the problem replicates itself.

If it doesn't then it is likely to definately be a software issue and the main problems should be able to be identified via the other advice that has been given by the forum members, normally in my experience it is a driver issue somewhere along the line.

Safemode should rule out any hardware issues if it works fine.

A guide on how to do this if you haven't already can be found via http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/Start-your-computer-in-safe-mode