Windows XP "Blue Screen of Death"

bjones371

Well-Known Member
Joined
9 Aug 2006
Messages
229
Location
Denton, Manchester
I've started getting an error message on my laptop every time I boot it up saying windows has been shut down to prevent damage to my computer. It tells me to run chkdsk /f to try and fix the problem and a code 0x00000024

My PC won't even let me boot off the Windows installation CD, i get a PCI.sys blue scree when i do that so I look to be screwed. I've run DOS-based diagnostics on my HDD and it says it's fine. I can't boot from any floppy disks because as it's a laptop it doesn't actually have a floppy drive so that's a no aswell.

Anyone who can resolve this would be an ultimate legend :D
 
Thanks for the start in helping BS but I've managed to fix it, got the HDD out of my laptop and put it into a drive caddy, plugged it into my brothers PC and ran chkdsk from there. Cheers anyway
 
If it loads up, then like stops. Then quickly keep pressing F12. This then allows you to boot form the disk. Thats what i did with mine, but you lose everyting. As it kept happening, i sent it off to be repaired, all they said was it was a broken hardrive, and replaced it.
 
Yeah came close to re-formatting it myself but realised that i could do it the way I did and it saved me from losing alot of important data (eg coursework, music files, etc)

Had a huge scare when i connected it though and tried to browse the files, got the message:

"This drive is corrupted and data cannot be read from it"

chkdsk /f managed to fix it though, deleted all kinds of indexes and things like that and repaired some free space that was noted as allocated in the MFT but after about 50 minutes of fixing (probably down to the slow USB 1.1 on my brother's PC) it all worked.
 
Where did you get the drive caddy from? I could do with one as I am forever having to deal with teachers' broken laptops who have a lifetime of planning on them. (I have a flat spot on my forehead from trying to get them to save things to the network, a memory stick, a CD-R...)
 
There's one at maplins that does IDE and SATA hard drives, you jus have to swap over the adapters if you want to use the different type of drive but there's full instructions with the caddy.

This is the one I use, very reliable up to now, shame it needs an external power supply but if you can deal with that then they're awesome for data recovery etc

3.5 inch IDE/SATA USB 2.0 Combo Enclosure
 
Yeah the caddy comes with one, it works like this:

When you take the cover off the caddy (you unscrew a black panel off the back of the caddy and the metal casing slides off the enclosure), there is an IDE cable and a molex power connector attached to a circuit board not dissimilar to a shrunk down motherboard in a way. These would connect to a standard 3.5 inch HDD very simply. You can remove the IDE cable and molex power adapter from the circuit board and in the box are two extra leads for SATA drives, you plug these leads onto the circuit board in their place and connect the other ends to the laptop drive. There's 2 SATA leads (the leads usually on laptop drives) that come in the box, one is used for power and the other is the data interface. There are better instructions with the caddy, these are just a summary lol. But as laptop drives are smaller I'd recommend that you take extra care when a laptop drive is connected to it so the caddy isn't shaken about or anything like that whilst the drive is inside it because they won't be able to withstand it. Then plug in the mains adapter and the USB lead and press the power button, let the drive reach it's spin speed (only takes a few seconds) and then the PC will automatically recognise the drive and show it in My Computer. It shows up as a hard drive though, not a removable storage device.

Or you could buy a 2.5 inch drive enclosure, also from maplins, if you'll have no need to put a full sized PC HDD into a caddy. This would remove the need to swap the cables on the caddy's board as 2.5 inch HDDs all have SATA connections anyway (well all recent ones do). If you're not sure then just go for the one I've showed you there, its guaranteed to work with any HDD that way.

It's pretty simple to work out, the cables only connnect to the correct port anyway so you can't really get it wrong! If you get one and struggle then let me know mate and I'll try and point you in the right direction.
 

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