Vista Black Screen of Death

[tech_guy]

I've been presented with a laptop with the Vista BSOD - black screen with white cursor that moves on input.

 

I can't remember what the solution to this problem was - am I right in recalling that the quickest option is simply a re-install?

 

Have tried a couple of the solutions found on the web but to no avail - deleting event logs, etc. Interestingly, there are no restore points, so it does appear to be the Vista BSOD SP1 issue?

 

Many thanks. I've managed to avoid Vista all these years and it's finally caught up with me!

[tech_guy]

Yeah, thanks for the sarcasm JoeW but I was kinda hoping for someone to jog my memory - when you get as old as me senility starts to kick in and you need all the help you can get....

[difinity]

I tried to avoid Vista also, but alas i still have to deal with it ocasionally.

It does sound like the BSOD issue. It is repairable, i can't remember what i did but it was something along the lines of slaving the hdd, removing or replacing something on the drive and returning it to the original PC.

If there's not to much on the PC, might be easier to transfer the files and just reinstall the OS.

[sparkeh]

Hmm I think that are a few causes of this.

One that sticks in my mind is the corrupt event log problem which is solved by using the DVD to boot into repair mode, going to c:\windows\system32\winevt and renaming the log folder and creating a new log folder called 'Logs'.

 

edit: Oh I see you have tried this :/

[Ignatius]

I researched this a few weeks ago and tried several solutions that I found. None worked so I ran the factory reinstall/recovery procedure. It was a lot quicker than everything else that I'd tried. Fortunately, the user didn't have anything on there that was vital or had not been backed up elsewhere. I suspect that, if there had been some valuable data, I would have used a Linux live CD to retrieve the data to an external HD first.

[tech_guy]

Yeah, I booted it from an Ubuntu live cd and the hdd was kosher. The owner didn't want any files copying so I just slid Vista back on again along with all the updates. Quicker than faffing around trying to solve the problem.

[Cache]

I researched this a few weeks ago and tried several solutions that I found. None worked so I ran the factory reinstall/recovery procedure. It was a lot quicker than everything else that I'd tried. Fortunately, the user didn't have anything on there that was vital or had not been backed up elsewhere. I suspect that, if there had been some valuable data, I would have used a Linux live CD to retrieve the data to an external HD first.

 

Somebody came to me with this and after spending several hours trying to do various things I gave up and said that it would need to be restored so copied the data off plugging the drive into another computer and wiped/reinstalled.

 

Had exactly the same issue and I assume that system restore was working, but nothing I tried was able to pick up the restore points.

[tech_guy]

On the laptop I had all the restore points had gone - seem to remember an issue regarding this with Vista and SP1?