I have a 2 year old Acer Desktop (2GHZ CPU, 2GB RAM, 300 GB SATA HDD, pre-installed Vista, etc..) that blue-screen o'death'ed earlier this week (while I was doing my weekly Zune synch (no Zune jokes, please 
)). It may be the first time I've seen this particular PC BSOD. Anyway, I assumed it was a minor annoyance and rebooted. After the Acer splash screen, the monitor went black (on, but black) and no amount of waiting (up to 5 minutes maybe) brought anything to the screen. I rebooted a couple more times and this was always the behaviour.
I entered the BIOS setup next and everything looked fine to my eyes, including the detection of the HDD. I pushed F12/F8 upon the next reboot to try to go to safe mode. It presented me two options: Recovery Console and Regular Boot. I started the Recovery Console. There were recovery points for the past 5 days or so, but recovering them failed. I got additional BSODs while trying the first recovery point, so I rebooted and tried others. Whether it BSOD'd or not, I was unable to successfully recover any of these. Sometimes I got an error that said "Error: File Exists."
I used the other parts of the recovery suite to start a DOS Window. I looked at part of the HDD, but when I tried to run a 'dir' on c:\windows\system32, it BSOD'd. Figuring the HDD might be toast, I plugged it in to a USB adapter to try to recover some personal files and pictures.
The first BSOD I got was something like APC_Kernel_not_something. (I must have that wrong since google isn't turning anything up. I'll have to check at home.) Then I started getting Page_Fault BSODs.
Google led me to believe that I might be having memory problems, so I plugged the HDD back in and took one of the two DIMMS out, and then I didn't get video at all. I took the other DIMM out and put the first DIMM back in- no video. I took both DIMMs out, and noticed the computer gives a very satisfactory prolonged BEEEEEEEEEP when you try to boot it without a DIMM. I put a DIMM back in and noticed that I got a variety of short beeps depending on what DIMM went into which socket.
At this point in time, I couldn't get video at all and while the system came on when I pressed power (the fans spun and a few lights came on) it didn't sound like it was working hard enough to actually boot. I unplugged the SATA cable to the DVD drive and unplugged the network and USB speakers at this point in time. Still no video.
I used to be better at this stuff, but I haven't kept up. I thought about taking it in somewhere to have a geek look at it, but I expect the cost will be more than 50% of the cost of a new desktop, so I'm not terribly interested.
Can someone follow this web of intrigue and offer me any advice? Thanks!
)). It may be the first time I've seen this particular PC BSOD. Anyway, I assumed it was a minor annoyance and rebooted. After the Acer splash screen, the monitor went black (on, but black) and no amount of waiting (up to 5 minutes maybe) brought anything to the screen. I rebooted a couple more times and this was always the behaviour. I entered the BIOS setup next and everything looked fine to my eyes, including the detection of the HDD. I pushed F12/F8 upon the next reboot to try to go to safe mode. It presented me two options: Recovery Console and Regular Boot. I started the Recovery Console. There were recovery points for the past 5 days or so, but recovering them failed. I got additional BSODs while trying the first recovery point, so I rebooted and tried others. Whether it BSOD'd or not, I was unable to successfully recover any of these. Sometimes I got an error that said "Error: File Exists."
I used the other parts of the recovery suite to start a DOS Window. I looked at part of the HDD, but when I tried to run a 'dir' on c:\windows\system32, it BSOD'd. Figuring the HDD might be toast, I plugged it in to a USB adapter to try to recover some personal files and pictures.
The first BSOD I got was something like APC_Kernel_not_something. (I must have that wrong since google isn't turning anything up. I'll have to check at home.) Then I started getting Page_Fault BSODs.
Google led me to believe that I might be having memory problems, so I plugged the HDD back in and took one of the two DIMMS out, and then I didn't get video at all. I took the other DIMM out and put the first DIMM back in- no video. I took both DIMMs out, and noticed the computer gives a very satisfactory prolonged BEEEEEEEEEP when you try to boot it without a DIMM. I put a DIMM back in and noticed that I got a variety of short beeps depending on what DIMM went into which socket.
At this point in time, I couldn't get video at all and while the system came on when I pressed power (the fans spun and a few lights came on) it didn't sound like it was working hard enough to actually boot. I unplugged the SATA cable to the DVD drive and unplugged the network and USB speakers at this point in time. Still no video.
I used to be better at this stuff, but I haven't kept up. I thought about taking it in somewhere to have a geek look at it, but I expect the cost will be more than 50% of the cost of a new desktop, so I'm not terribly interested.
Can someone follow this web of intrigue and offer me any advice? Thanks!
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