Dell Inspiron 530 blue screen

[Guest]

Hi, my parents have a Dell Inspiron 530 with windows xp and everytime you turn it on after the xp loading screen it ends up on a blue screen. I am not sure what could have happened. I thought of re-installing or updating the bios but I am more of a hardware person so I am not sure. Is there anything that you guys could suggest for what to try. Any help is appreciated!

 

[venjhammet]

Go to this site http://hcidesign.com/memtest/purchase.html. Download memtest and try testing your ram and see if there are problems there.

 

[Guest]

the problem is that the pc won't even boot up past the os loading screen. is there anything I could check in the bios?

 

[jaquith]

My 'feeling' is a bad PSU, you can clear CMOS {easy way = shutdown, unplug and remove CMOS battery ~15 minutes -> boot into BIOS and set Date + Time}.

I seriously doubt a BIOS flash is necessary if the Dell was running before w/o problems, and if it shuts-down while flashing then you'll have an expensive paperweight.

In addition, for now, disconnect all USB devices {including keyboard & mouse}; yes I know you'll need to force shutdown if it boots and KB/M isn't recognized - the test is for a bad peripheral causing a problem/short.

 

[Guest]

Well since I didn't check your replies till now, yesterday I removed 2 sticks of the ram and the processor and put them in one of my older pc's and it worked fine. So I'm thinking that it has a virus in the hard drive or whatever. My dad's friend is going to look into the computer with his computer to see since he has been fixing alot of blue screens lately.

 

[jaquith]

Either Try 'Safe Mode' or Normal and run MSCONFIG and select Diagnostic and restart.

Also, try ESET online scanner http://www.eset.com/online-scanner

Plus, CCleaner and run the registry cleaner {back-up the Registry} http://www.piriform.com/

All are FREE

 

[Guest]

sorry for replying so late again, so I went to install an anti-virus program on that older pc and it was almost done when it started saying "rolling back action", and the progress bar went backwards so I'm pretty sure that either the ram or processor has a virus on it. So I took those parts out and put them back into the dell, and we will see what my dad's friends says.

 

[Guest]

Hey Bro, straight up. You have a hardrive problem. I could almost swear its a (system volume error) on the HD. I've fixed hundreds of them. If not a volume error then I could almost guarantee that the HD is either going bad or is bad. One other thing could be a bad ram chip, but if the blue screen pops up at the same place consistently everytime the pc is powered on ( ex: right after boot screen, NOT at boot screen one time then at the windows logon screen the next time) then im pretty surte its a HD error. run a harddrive scan on it via the command console. Here is the cmd line to type: CHKDSK /f /r if that doesnt fix it it probably is a bad RAM chip.