[keviiinn]

Mini 910
Win XP

for some reason, I suddenly started receiving the blue screen one day when I was using Firefox. I had nothing else significant open, and had not recently installed any hardware or software.

it said it if was the first time I received that error, to just restart, which I did. well now the screen pops up on startup, usually right after or during the Welcome screen. I can't even get into Safe mode to try anything, as the blue screen comes up even during bootup to Safe mode.

after a few restarts, the OS actually booted up and I was trying to do a System restore, to see if that would help things. well once I opened the system restore, I get a tray notification saying something to the effect of "Unknown hard error." hard, not hardware.

so the only left I can try is to disable the BIOS caching and shadowing. for the life of me I can't seem to find where I'm suppose to do that in the BIOS setup screen. is there some kind of hidden menu in the BIOS setup?

[rrfranczak3]

no hidden screens, I believe that the caching and all is handled in Windows not the BIOS, as far as the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) goes it depends on how computer savvy you are...most novices will just have to reinstall windows, but if you can sometimes you can boot from the Windows DVD (an external DVD drive is required or a USB Flashdrive with Windows on it) and do a repair on Windows

The BSOD is usually an indication that something in windows is corrupted and either a repair or a re-install will fix it.....you most likely got a virus somewhere which corrupted the file system or partition table..some viruses will destroy the master boot record (mbr)


PS. Welcome to the forum...

[keviiinn]

thanks for the reply. I am relatively computer savvy, I did see the thread about installing Windows from a USB stick, I will look into doing that. I just hope this isn't a hardware issuem since that's what it looks like it was from that tray notification.

there were some specific error codes on the Blue Screen, I will research what they are and post them here also when I get a chance.

[holmes4]

There are no BIOS options for this. What Windows is telling you is that a write to the SSD failed - "hard error" is the term as compared to "soft error" which is recoverable. If you are getting this a lot, it suggests your SSD is in the process of failing.

[keviiinn]

how useful are the HP Diagnostics? (Pressing 0 on startup) I ran a few of the tests and a couple failed to run, or complete. that's a problem right?

[rrfranczak3]

like Steve said your SSD is either on its way out or has failed already

[keviiinn]

tried booting up my laptop now so I could search for the error codes. first time I started it up, I got this blue screen:

STOP: 000021a Unknown Hard Error
Unknown Hard Error

and that was it, just those 2 lines.

turned it off and on again, and this time I got the full BSOD.

A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated.

...

Technical information:

***STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x85ABB620, 0x85ABB794, 0x805D2954)

Beginning of dump of physical memory

[holmes4]

Your SSD is dying.

[keviiinn]

that looks like the problem. I've tried to make a Windows XP install on a USB stick, and it's not even able to copy any files over to the SSD during the text part of the setup. I will look into either getting a new SSD or a new laptop altogether.