New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

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Executioner
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New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

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Got a call from my daughter about her desktop with windows 7 x64. It would boot, get to the login screen, then the screen right before the desktop shows up, and black screen. In safe mode, it does the same thing. Just a black screen. So I press ctrl-alt-del and the task manager shows on the screen, but that is the only window on the screen. From there, I'm able to do just those functions on the screen and nothing more.

Tried the usual stuff:
reset ram
reset video card
replace video card with another
checked the SSD with Spinrite - no issues

So now I'm checking the 4 sticks of 2g ram. Bingo - 2 sticks are bad. So I removed those from the system as the other 2 are fine, and I expected the pc to boot to the desktop. No go - same issue - black screen.

So now, I remove the SSD and replace it with her old spinner, and it works. So the SSD got corrupt. After talking to my daughter about the status, she said that before happened, it would crash while playing games and she had to reboot. So is that possible that the ram caused the corruption in the SSD?

I was able to read the drive by having it slaved off as a USB device. I was able to get her files.
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Re: New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Sounds like corrupt file system. Did you try:

- running chkdsk /f on the ssd
- restore the registry from a backup (google it - there is a folder where the last bootable copy of the registry hive files are saved)
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Re: New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

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Nope. Yeah I was going to do the sfc /scannow, but this is a 5 year old OS install, plus, being in college I'm sure she had lots of junk. So I installed Win7 Pro. Now comes all the downloads.

I've heard of geeks that turn off updates to 7. She does have ESET Internet Security and Malwarebytes that is active. I just question these updates - not sure what you are getting with the "quality rollup".
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Re: New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

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The only way I would ever turn off updates is if you make her a limited user, and setup a separate admin account she doesn't have the password for (but she won't be able to install anything). Or, if you trust her, give her the admin password (make it a difficult one to type in so she has time to think about it) and tell her to call you first if ANYTHING asks for the admin password.

Be aware, even as a limited user, there have been exploits that have bypassed UAC. Not many, but a few. Still better to keep updates, just configure only for critical ones AND also set her up as a limited user for protection.

You don't need "Quality" rollups, just the security ones. There's a setting in updates that only installs the security updates.
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Re: New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

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FlyingPenguin wrote:You don't need "Quality" rollups, just the security ones. There's a setting in updates that only installs the security updates.
What setting is that?

I thought with the typical patch Tuesday, that all you get is the one large quality rollup with security and who knows what else.
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Re: New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

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Anyone use WSUS Offline Update? I'm downloading it now to get a list of all the updates for windows 7.
http://download.wsusoffline.net/
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Re: New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

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In Win7 uncheck "Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates." That will prevent any non-security updates from installing.
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Re: New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

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FlyingPenguin wrote:In Win7 uncheck "Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates." That will prevent any non-security updates from installing.
OK thanks. Did you ever try the WSUS Offline Update tool?
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Re: New one on me: daugher's desktoop pc died

Post by FlyingPenguin »

No, I use Desktop Central.
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