My laptop is comatose

[Patchouli]

It allowed me to log in, then it fiddled around, gave me the gray/black screen of death.
After a few minutes of that, I turned it off.
A bit later I turned it back on, logged in, seemed like it was getting ready. I left it alone. Now I have the green blue screen of not dead yet.
Any doctors in the house?
I'm on my phone.

 

[Bacpacker]

Mine crapped out 3 weeks ago. Replaced it. Want to pull the hard drive and download it to a external drive.

 

[dademoss]

It allowed me to log in, then it fiddled around, gave me the gray/black screen of death.
After a few minutes of that, I turned it off.
A bit later I turned it back on, logged in, seemed like it was getting ready. I left it alone. Now I have the green blue screen of not dead yet.
Any doctors in the house?
I'm on my phone.

See if you can start it in "safe Mode" :

Windows 10: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode

Windows 7: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17419/windows-7-advanced-startup-options-safe-mode

In case it's a OSX(Apple) machine: https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/mac-startup-options/

 

[AdmiralD7S]

It allowed me to log in, then it fiddled around, gave me the gray/black screen of death.
After a few minutes of that, I turned it off.
A bit later I turned it back on, logged in, seemed like it was getting ready. I left it alone. Now I have the green blue screen of not dead yet.
Any doctors in the house?
I'm on my phone.

There was one trying to sell a free farm last week. Maybe he's still around...

I'm certainly a tech-y guy, but I foresee this being like calling a mechanic and trying to reproduce, over the phone, the sound that your car is making.

Fundamentally, all your error screens (the so-called BSOD - Blue Screen of Death, the black/gray memory dump screens, etc.) are a result of your operating system (OS) having an electronic stroke. Unfortunately, it can be problematic to determine the cause as many "apparent causes" are really just symptoms of the root cause.

For instance, it might appear that an OS is corrupted, and so a clean install might fix it. But was that corruption caused by a virus? Was it a collection of independent actions that made a unique case? Maybe your hard drive itself is dying. Maybe you lost power last night while your system was updating. Maybe a lightning strike hurt your power supply. So many possibilities! There us a reason that Best Buy's geek squad has something like a 10 minute timer before they give up and do a clean install!

We can probably solve this, but its primarily going to be a function of your determination to save THIS computer with THIS OS installation...and it will take time to do back and forth on a forum.

To start with, some questions for you.

1. Is this a desktop or a laptop?
2. If a desktop, does the motherboard have a status code display? (You would have to open the case to see it)
3. If it's a desktop but do not have a status code display, you can buy one and see what the hardware is doing. This is the surest way to troubleshoot if theres a hardware issue.
4. When you try to turn it on, do you get a splash screen (like a Dell/HP logo)?
5. Can you get into the BIOS settings?
6. Does Windows (I'm assuming its windows...) start to boot at all?

Let's start with those and see where we get to.

 

[Patchouli]

My bad. My NH is tinkering with it. We have recovery discs which he's using now.
Windows did boot up. Can get to desktop.
He said that updates with Microsoft were trashing computers in general. Yes, a laptop is what I have.
He was thinking it was the hard drive.
A message about Microsoft did flash up on the screen, that it wasn't responding.
Windows detected file system corruption on C.
I think I need a new hard drive.
You're right....this is not effective consultation with my forum computer guru brothers...lol whatever.

 

[Peanut]

Thanks for posting... reminded me I haven't backed up all my data since christmas week... Thumb drives... they beat the heck out of floppies.

I did download a new version of ubuntu on 23Jan. I guess it's time I take the new drive out of the box... (I bought last May) and load it up.

I've been looking for a reason to get motivated... now is the time.

Thankfully I have my old desktop loaded with XP, still runs, and a spare drive for it (loaded). I might go off line but it won't be for more than a week.

I believe in options.

Wish I could help... but sorry... tech passed me by around 2006.

 

[Patchouli]

The man has assured me it will run all night to resolve the issues.

 

[Bacpacker]

Admiral, thanks for the input. That gives me somewhere to try and get my old one back on line again. It's a start at least.

Patch, I hope you have lots of luck getting your running again.

 

[JAC]

.

 

[Patchouli]

YES, multiple reboot times.
The man said he backed up the system, and if you know me, what he said goes into my brain and gets lost. Which is better than in one ear and out the other.

So, he's the man. And yes it is fixed. Thank you all. The check is in the mail to my favorite charity case. Lol

 

[JAC]

Thankfully I have my old desktop loaded with XP, still runs, and a spare drive for it (loaded).

I liked XP. It worked. I used to really enjoy playing Battlefield Vietnam on XP. It won't play on win 7 or win10. I wish I had a puter with xp so I could play the game again.

 

[Peanut]

I liked XP. It worked. I used to really enjoy playing Battlefield Vietnam on XP. It won't play on win 7 or win10. I wish I had a puter with xp so I could play the game again.

There are patches available to play XP compatible games on win 7, 8 and 10. They don't always work. I tried all of them on my Dell inspiron with win 10... none worked. So I keep the XP desktop on my office desk in my bedroom. Occasionally I go in there and play the Doom games and Quake.

There are also patches available to play XP games on linux op's. I'll have to give them a try. It was so warm today I worked on my front door instead of my dell.

 

[Patchouli]

One of muy recovery discs was corrupt. It has a scratch.

 

[AdmiralD7S]

I liked XP. It worked. I used to really enjoy playing Battlefield Vietnam on XP. It won't play on win 7 or win10. I wish I had a puter with xp so I could play the game again.

Uf you still have a copy of XP (or can find one on eBay or similar), you might look at VirtualBox. It would take a fairly good computer to run XP and BV through VB, but that might be an option for you.

 

[Bacpacker]

Glad you got it running again Patch.

IMO XP is the best OS windows ever put out. I'm sure they moved on past it just for that reason! My Desk top still run on it as well.

 

[JAC]

Glad you got it running again Patch.

IMO XP is the best OS windows ever put out. I'm sure they moved on past it just for that reason! My Desk top still run on it as well.

The only reason for them to come out with new OS as often as they do is money.

 

[UncleJoe]

Thumb drives... they beat the heck out of floppies.

I use a 1TB external hard drive for backup. Cost me $50 and I've only used about 20% of it in 6 years.

 

[The Lazy L]

Glad you got it running again Patch.

IMO XP is the best OS windows ever put out. I'm sure they moved on past it just for that reason! My Desk top still run on it as well.

I agree 100%!!!

My work laptop is still on XP. Quite a lot of work's electronics (for remote access) wasn't update pass XP. Our IP folks keep telling my laptop is "obsolete" and needs to be replaced. When I question since the laptop does every thing work requires how can it be "obsolete", they leave me alone until the next cycle.

 

[viking]

I may have to go back to my Compac tower, what Iv'e been using is a touch screen Toshiba Satellite, it should be lightning fast, 1.7 dual core, 1 terrabite hard drive and more than enough memory, I do not like the thing, in fact, I'm ready to use it for target practice, if I lay my palms on the area below the key board it causes the dang thing to do all kinds of weird things, pages enlarge, pages disappear and just leaving the curser point on a You Tube video site for a second or two will cause it to start playing, even with the auto play shut off. Though touch screens are convenient, I doubt that I will ever buy another one. I always thought Toshiba made good stuff but this thing has been a PITA pretty much from the start, it's almost like it has a mind of its own and I frequently have bad words for it while using it and above all I would not recommend anyone to buy one like it---rant off.

 

[Terri9630]

My daughter has one. The built in mouse pad is extremely sensitive. My husband turned it off somehow and gave her a wireless mouse to use.

 

[The Lazy L]

My daughter has one. The built in mouse pad is extremely sensitive. My husband turned it off somehow and gave her a wireless mouse to use.

Could the sensitivity be software adjusted?

 

[Terri9630]

Could the sensitivity be software adjusted?

No idea. I'm computer challenged.

 

[SheepDog]

In some brands of Linux you can completely control the touch pad. I removed the "click" function so I use the buttons to right and left click. My heavy hands made it nearly impossible to use the pad as installed.

 

[Flight]

In some brands of Linux you can completely control the touch pad. I removed the "click" function so I use the buttons to right and left click. My heavy hands made it nearly impossible to use the pad as installed.

Do you use linux? If so which one?

 

[SheepDog]

I use Ubuntu on all of my computers and my back-up drives are formatted to be compatible.
I haven't had any software issues since I walked away from Microsoft. I refuse to use any Microsoft compatible software.
Everything I use now is open source software. None of it contains any kind of spyware and it is just about incapable of hiding viruses.
Ubuntu comes with a good firewall that is easy to customize and there are a number of additional firewalls that can be added. My computers are fortresses that require three passwords to gain access and change or add software. I like it.I haven't found anything I can't do that Windows can. (other than report everything I do to Microsoft)

 

[Flight]

Ok, when I do play with linux its usually Fedora, as for the rest of what you said, I am in total agreement