Windows Failed! ('blue screen of death' and everything) Should I do a system restore?

Question

So I have a question and it’s kind of a duzie. Here’s the deal - I have a laptop (Dell Inspiron 8600 series) that recently crashed. I’m getting that telltale ‘blue screen of death’, so I’m going to go ahead and say that, yeah, my operating system failed. I’ve tried everything - I can’t get it into safe mode, or any other kind of mode - nothing works. So my question is this, we recently had to dump the hard drive on our other desktop, and we were able to retrieve a lot of the files we’d lost using a file recovery program that we bought online. My thought is that I should do a complete system restore, and then use this other software once I get my OS back up to retrieve the files I’d lost. Is that a bad plan of action? Will a system restore even help? What do you recommend? : )

Answer 1

Hey :)

1. Boot your computer from your Windows XP Cd. To do this, insert your CD and turn your computer on. When the menu comes up, select boot from CD (do not select boot from hard drive).

2. Your computer will begin to boot. Eventually, you will see a screen asking you what you would like to do. Press the letter R on your keyboard to proceed to the Windows Recovery Console.

3. You may be asked for your administrator password. If you have one, type it in and press enter. If you do not have a password to boot your computer into Windows, simply press enter.

4. Now you should be at a command prompt. from here, type the following command without the quotes and press enter: "chkdsk /r"

5. This test will take a while depending on the size of your drive. It will look for the errors on your drive and repair them. When it completes, you will be back at a command prompt.

6. Remove the floppy disk or CD from your system and restart the PC.

7. If this still fails , Redo this procedure but instead of typing "chkdsk /r" type "chkdsk /p"

Its not as difficult as it seems

Comms.

Answer 2

It depends on what the blue screen message information said. Chances are it was a STOP! blue-screen, but it would normally have more information after that. I would write down the stop code and what it says and first search the internet (from another machine, obviously) on what that particular STOP! code means. It may be something as simple as reseating the memory modules in your machine. If you have a name brand PC (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc..) then your running the full system restore CD will wipe out anything else you had on it and bring it back to how it was when you first bought it. You'll have to install everything else you had, like printers, cameras, and other software.

Answer 3

OK so far you did right steps so far, but blue screen BSoD often indicate a hardware failure behind the scene, Windows XP and onward got off real improved Windows NT programming that software conflicts rarely generate BSoD so fatal of error, there should be some text title describing the failure in English.

I did few months ago experienced hard drive circuit surge out of the blue and had to replace that, it gave no drive found error in bootup before replacement.

Answer 4

I would recommend a system restore, so you can restore it to the point when your computer was working fine

Answer 5

Could be a problem with device drivers, hardware or software. This  problem can be solved by uninstalling new softwares, updating device drivers and making minor configuration changes . From http://fixit.in/bluescreenofdeath.html . You can also run a free registry scan using utilities from http://re7.info