Laptop Crashing

[mtblillie]

The date and time in BIOS seems to match what is displayed in the system tray, which match my phone’s time as well.

[phillpower2]

Time and date info acknowledged (y)

Found the following online for disabling fast boot on a Dell notebook;

1. Make sure the laptop is turned off. Not in Hibernate or Sleep mode.
2. Press the power button and hold it down. The system should emit three short beeps from the speaker, or headphones if you have them plugged in.
3. After the beeps, release the power button ‘before’ the 4-second shutdown override.
4. The power button menu should now display.
5. Press F3 to disable Fast Boot.

[mtblillie]

I unfortunately was not able to perform this procedure. I turned off my computer and held down the power button, when I did the computer began to boot normally for about 2-3 seconds and then shut off, as if I had pressed the button once to turn on the laptop and then again to turn off, but I was actually holding the button down the whole time. Not sure what the story with that is. If you like I can research how to disable fast boot using an alternative method.

Also my computer had BSOD crashes last night and today, thought I’d upload those mini dump files in case they were helpful.

[phillpower2]

Not sure what it is with your computer, it doesnt seem to behave as is expected with anything suggested, not even disabling Fast Boot the way that Dell Techs tell us to, see video here

Try doing it manually using the Command Prompt, you must do this signed in as Administrator.

Press the Windows key on your keyboard, and type in Command Prompt.
Without pressing Enter, right-click the cmd icon that appears, then select Run as administrator.
Type in powercfg -h off and press Enter.

Memory compression and a problem with the HDD or the image on the HDD are again both flagged up in each of the two dmps, time to properly test the RAM, this can take a long time so you are best to leave the tests running overnight or if you are out for the day, download and run Memtest 86 for a minimum of four or five passes.

If the RAM fails before you have run Memtest 4/5 times post back and let us know rather than continuing with the testing.

[phillpower2]

Any update for us?

[mtblillie]

Sorry again for the delay, it had been a busy week and on top of that I was sick the last few days. I swear I don’t mean to take so long to respond. I will try that tonight and see what happens. My computer originally had Windows 8 and then updated to Windows 10 when the free rollout happened, I don’t know if maybe that is the root of these issues or not. I will updated this post when I have completed the tasks above.

[phillpower2]

Take care of your health first, we appreciate you letting us know why the thread had gone quiet (y)

[mtblillie]

Take care of your health first, we appreciate you letting us know why the thread had gone quiet (y)

Thank you, I appreciate it!

I wanted to give an update. I tried to get Memtest working the other night but the laptop kept crashing, I think my getting impatient with it and frequently restarting rather than letting go to blue screen is the likely reason. Anyway I gave up and attempted it again today, but am finding that the memtest program doesn’t seem to be installing properly on my usb momory drive. I think it is a formatting issue I will attempt to figure it out later, hopefully tomorrow.

I did however figure out why the fast boot setting didn’t show on the power button options. Apparently, since it is connected to hibernation, it won’t appear in the settings because it is unavailable so long as hibernation is disabled. So, it seems we were successful in disabling hibernation before getting to that step.

[phillpower2]

Thanks for the update (y)

I did however figure out why the fast boot setting didn’t show on the power button options. Apparently, since it is connected to hibernation, it won’t appear in the settings because it is unavailable so long as hibernation is disabled. So, it seems we were successful in disabling hibernation before getting to that step.

It may be something to do with UEFI BIOS, Hibernation is disabled on my computer but as you could see in my previous screenshot the option to disable fast boot was an option.

Have you tried re enabling Hibernation and then disabling fast boot, if not, can you give it a try and if you are able to disable fast boot could you then try running Memtest from your USB device, the fast boot being enabled was most likely what was causing you problems with running Memtest from the USB device.

[mtblillie]

I did as you asked and enabled hibernation. This time, fast boot showed on the power button options and I was able to disable it.

Unfortunately I am still having issues with memtest. I’m not sure if it is a problem with the USB drive, the computer, or just user error. I am not certain that an image is being written onto the USB as the program shuts off not long after I tell it to create the image. I’m not sure if that is normal behavior or indicative of a problem.

When I boot to the drive (or what I think is the drive, since it gives a name I do not recognize) the computer simply starts up as normal. I’m not sure if I am missing a step, it is kind of hard to research since computers often have different methods of booting from a disk and there doesn’t seem to be a uniform method. I will keep researching and keep trying, hopefully I can find an answer.

[phillpower2]

Please see here and in particular the Creating a MemTest86 bootable USB Flash drive in Windows and the Usage information.

[mtblillie]

Please see here and in particular the Creating a MemTest86 bootable USB Flash drive in Windows and the Usage information.

I still am unable to create a bootable drive. I follow the steps provided, but when I run the image writing software (after selecting the correct USB thumb drive and image), it says 0% complete and then just shuts down. I have tried re-downloading the software, re-formatting the thumb drive, but nothing works. I have included an image of the program just before it shuts off.

[phillpower2]

Nothing being written to the thumbdrive for some reason

Do you have another thumbdrive or another computer that you could try creating the bootable USB thumbdrive on.

Meanwhile, try the Windows memory diagnostic, see tutorial courtesy of Shawn Brink here

[mtblillie]

Actually yes, there is another computer I can try, I will do that. I do have another thumb drive but I would like to try using the other computer first, simply because I use it for one of my jobs and it would be a bit of pain to back it all up and run the test, but I will do that if I have to.

The Windows memory test came up with no errors. I am hopeful that this is a good sign, but I am aware that it may not detect certain problems that MemTest might. I will update if I can get memtest working through one of these other options.

[phillpower2]

Thanks for the update (y)