Windows 7 blue screen on startup

[Jamlev]

Out of the blue this morning my comp wont start up, W7 blue screens before the login screen appears and instantly reboots. No new hardware has been added.

Here is what I have tried.

Change graphics card.
Change RAM.
Memory diagnostic.
System repair.
Safe mode (works).
LKGC.
Uninstall AVS video converter (only new software installed yesterday).
Uninstall Daemon Tools.
System repair from Windows DVD (fails - incompatible version).


All I'm left with is a format and reinstall if I cant solve this - safe mode works fine so it must be fixable!

System specs:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 SP1
AMD FX 4100
8GB HyperX RAM
HD 6770 Graphics
OZC SSD 120GB
ASUS M5A87 board

Any suggestions appreciated.
THX.

 

[Guest]

since i am lazy, it would seem doing a fresh install may save you time and frustration.

come to think of it, have you done a restore point in safe mode?

 

[Jamlev]

Thanks for the quick reply.

System restore was turned off.

I also notice that when I boot from the Windows DVD it complaints about a driver:
"A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive please insert it now."

Could this be related?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the quick reply.

System restore was turned off.

I also notice that when I boot from the Windows DVD it complaints about a driver:
"A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB flash drive please insert it now."

Could this be related?

thats funny its asked to insert it in hardware that has a driver missing.

i doubt it is the *whole* problem but it could be a symptom of what is going on.

 

[Jamlev]

A bit more info, after running the start up repair (which doesn't fix the problem) it gives me this error:

Root cause found
----------------------
A recent driver installation or upgrade maybe preventing the system from starting.

Repair action: System files integrity check and repair
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x490
Time taken = 331830 ms


I haven't installed any new drivers or hardware recently.

Running sfc /scannow from the command prompt gives me this:

"Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. "

 

[Guest]

look in device manger and see if something has a problem, disk drive, graphics card . .

 

[Jamlev]

All ok in there, I tried to rollback SP1 and reinstall it but that doesn't work either.

It started the scandisk program while rebooting now and has found a bunch of errors so do you reckon the SSD is bad (its less than 2 months old)?

 

[Guest]

i wouldn't know if scandisk would naturally find errors on an SSD since it might be unfamiliar with the hardware. (?) warning, i am SSD "challenged"

do you have the old platter that you could pop in and boot off of?

 

[caqde]

given the way chkdsk works there is some sort of issue with your SSD, Sata cable, or Sata Controller. But given that things work the way they are I would almost guarantee that the problem is with the SSD. Those corrupted files are likely the ones that are causing the bluescreen, and the reason you are able to get to safe mode is because you were able to install windows on the drive successfully in the first place. It is likely that the drive might have been bad when you first got it and when data was written and moved around the drive during updates/etc it eventually ran into corrupt sectors on the SSD and failed to successfully write the data to disk causing your bluescreen at boot.

I don't know how good it is but you can try and use ssdlife to diagnose the drive http://hddlife.com/eng/downloads.html. The only other thing that can cause corruption is bad memory sticks which is another thing to check for.

 

[Jamlev]

Ok, managed to reinstall W7, though now its empty with no drivers or programs.

SSDlife reported Excellent drive health at 100%.

So now my options are to do a complete format and start from scratch again, take the SSD back (though they wont replace it if it reports as healthy), or reinstall on a SATA hard disk and see how that goes.

My concern is that it will happen again, I still have no idea why Windows decided to throw up an unrecoverable BSOD for no apparent reason. The issue still isnt resolved.

 

[Jamlev]

Well managed to format and install using a SATA disk and the SSD with no problems whatsoever so still completely in the dark as to why this happened.

I'll leave system restore on this time just in case.