Over the past week, and most recently a few minutes ago, whilst signed in to the forum the screen and controls freeze, then the screen goes blank and shortly after a blue screen comes up with a message something like “your PC has run into an unexpected problem etc. etc. and will need a re-boot which we will carry out”, not always effectively I might add. Has anyone else experienced this or is it really only MY PC that has the problem?
Had my own issues down here in South Devon.
Mobile signal down for over a week and now the broadband is dropping at regular intervals.
I have noticed that the forum format seems to have changed/got corrupted. Still useable but base page elongated with recent posts followed by forum headers - not quite right.
Not sure if it’s just me countryboy but my technology is cursed this month.
Sounds suspiciously like you’ve been hacked, Is the message ‘headed’ e.g. - from a known source/ and are you asked to log in, with your password and other information? Clicking on unknown (source) emails or other message that you aren’t aware are proper - like not from MS or other known sources can also lead to trouble.
I recently had an email from a well known member, and doubting the content (how to get rich in a week) I emailed him back, only to see it bounce, I then checked the email address of the sender, and it was definitely not his email address. Email deleted. Fortunately, being aware of the kind of scams flying around, I didn’t click on the email itself, just on the sender.
Have you got anti scam and software protection on your computer? If not, I’d suggest AVG, which I used for several years till BT landed me with their own software (Mcafee). THe less extensive (but effective) AVG software is free.
I’m also on our Borough Neighbourhood Watch network, which includes the Council, fire brigade, police - with the local internet watchdog advisories, plus optional connections to the Met and other services. We get warnings quite regularly, some not shown in other sources. Having said that. I’m still very careful about what I download and who I contact, so the above was an error on my part “Always check the senders email address before replying”! Is now firmly embedded in my mind.
The ‘blue screen of death’ as it’s known is usually a sign there’s a problem with the hardware on your PC or Laptop. Windows will record these episodes in the events log, which you can access once it’s restarted. They may tell you what the problem is. I’ve had this happen twice before. Once was the beginning of the motherboard failing, you really don’t want that. The other was a problem with the video driver. This was eventually rectified by updating the driver. Sorry I can’t be more specific, but I’m a technophobe and only bother to learn how things work when they go wrong. If you do a search for ‘blue screen of death’ you’ll probably find enough reading to keep you busy for a good while, and hopefully sort your problem out.
The following link is a few years old now, but may be of interest.
http://www.howtogeek.com/163452/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-blue-screen-of-death/
Hi Gerry. No this message is generated internally by “Windows” after the seizure and the outside link is broken. I have to power off and then re-start or re-boot the system then the internet connection is made and my Google menu page re- appears. No information is asked for, given to an external source. I get enough scam e-mails a week to fill an usb stick but after checking the sender they get deleted straight away. Thanks for your reply.
Hello my friend. That link was VERY useful it showed the exact page I’m getting, the one with the face and BIG PRINT. Like yourself I’m a complete techno-phobe so I shall have to enlist the help of my niece and her husband who are both computers whizz’s, that’s their business. So again many thanks.
Which version of Windows are you running? Taxi Driver has evoked memories of a previous version I ran which did this a few times, generally Windows will go back in time to a previous update and restart your computer from that point. Sorry - I can’t remember how now, as not suffered since I updated computer about three years ago, and now running Windows 10. Usual reason why Windows does this seems to be because later updates haven’t ‘set’ on your computer. Further updates may or may not bring it back again. Support from MS will cease in 2020 I believe for any version prior to 10.
You can take a look at details of why it’s happening in the events log. You can find this by simply typing ‘events log’ into with windows search pane in the bottom left corner of your screen. It’s part of the control panel.
Back up all your files, to an external hard drive or a cloud source.
If you’ve got something like Norton Ghost or Acronis (goole them) then clone your hard drive.
I’ve experienced the blue screen of death on computers before but as I clone my system at least monthly when hard drives have died its just been a quick switching of them and I’m back in business from the last back up.
Hi Gerry. My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15R which I bought August 2013 it came with Windows 8 installed, that then upgraded to Windows 10 and any updates are installed automatically.
Thanks everyone for your thoughts and suggestions. There is a Dell service agent just a couple of miles from me so I shall be taking the laptop to them this morning. Thanks again!
I have the Insipron 17R laptop running windows 10 that experienced a lot of BSOD’s, turned out to be the video graphics driver being pulled down by Microshat themselves.
BSOD’s tend to be caused by faulty memory, failed boot sectors or corrupt device drivers, (Commonly via the Microshat Downloads). Now I know that there’ll be people here saying “hasnt happened to me”, thats why I used the word “Usually”.
Gerryns advice is spot on, its called a “Last Known Good”. To use this, press the F8 key after the Dell Screen on boot but before the windows screen, (Best method is to power on the laptop and keep pressing F8 till it works). You should then see options such as Command Prompt, safe boot, command boot with Network, etctetc…at the bottom of this list should be “last known good boot”, select this option and select l in the next option for Last known, (I am operating totally from memory here and have moved away from windows systems).
HTH
As others have said, and I would put my money on, it sounds like your video driver is failing.
After the Windows 10 upgrade, it probably needs an update of the video driver. Go to the Dell website here and pull down the driver. Use the autodetect system and it will show you whats available, I suggest you upgrade all it shows you.
Have you tried “System Restore” I usually find that running this fixes most of my computer problems
I had this same message several times and followed the on screen advice, but it continued to display the blue screen quite regularly.
As above I also performed a system restore which quite simply resets the OS to a previous stable state, this worked for a short while but then once again I had the same problem.
I then checked the event viewer and found that these blue screen episodes had followed the installation of Apple i-Cloud to my Windows 10 computer, so I uninstalled it and it’s not happened since.
If you have installed any program just prior to the crashes I would suggest an uninstall of the program to see if this resolves it.
Best of luck… Oh and it helps if you swear at it!
Thanks to all who’ve offered help and advice. To add to my problems my router failed on Friday, and I just received the replacement today. Everything seems to be working fine, provided I use the “ethernet” cable connection as my laptop will not let me switch on “wifi” although it is available from the router. So I’m convinced, as are a lot of people it seems, that the root of my problems lie with the laptop/windows 10 although I have had “reboots” and a “reinstall”. So for the time being I’ll be happy with what I’ve got, and on a positive note I’ve noticed that the connection speeds have improved with the new router!
You are also better off using the Ethernet connection - it’s faster. Nothing will improve the line speed you’ve got, till they dump that copper wire and run fibre to your house. (Somewhere over the rainbow - - -)