Acer Aspire Windows Fail & BSOD

Hello techies of ATS!

I consider myself an okay computer person, but this has me scratching my head.

Background. I received my sister's desktop computer because it originally showed the "blue screen of death".

The computer is:
Acer Aspire AM5640-E5511A
Q6600 CORE 2 QUAD
4 GB DDR2
WINDOWS VISTA PREMIUM
MODEL YEAR 2008 (is my guess).

My sister originally bought it refurbished from the local big box retailer. Last year my sister decided to buy a new computer and gave me this one to look at.

Somehow this year I was able to start windows and replace vista with windows 7. The computer started fine a couple of times, and then I got the blue screen a few times. Other times windows would start and then freeze while it is loading.

But now windows won't even load in normal or in safe mode.

Can anyone help me out? I don't know if it is a power supply, capacitor, RAM, Processor, or motherboard issue.

Please help!

Also, if this screen shot helps of the event that would be great to receive feedback on it as well. Thank you.

Well ntfs.sys is the file system driver, so it looks like a dead hdd to me. Try a new/good working hdd in it, and I bet you it will install and boot fine. My Q6600 has never given me any problems unless I overclocked the motherboard in an old motherboard that caused the USB/SATA lines to flake out - no overclocking with that mobo.

But until I saw ntfs.sys in the bsod, I'd have said check the motherboard to see if it is setup different to the defaults. Something to try if you have not.

Try a live ubuntu CD in it with the HDD unplugged. If it boots up fine (and it will save you fiddling around installing an OS in the mean time, if that did come off as still a problem) and just see how that goes.

I'm betting the drive is just screwed.

reply to post by winofiend


How can you be so sure about it being the HDD? I haven't seen anything about that online..

Access the BIOS ROM setup.
Advanced Tab and select On Board Devices.
Change the value of SATA Hard Drive Native Mode from Enable to Disable.
Save and exit and continue to boot.
If nothing good happens;
Connect your HDD as "slave" to another computer and run:
a registry cleaner if there is one installed on it ( www.piriform.com...)
and
chdsk /r
"http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ss/rconsole.htm"
If that doesn't solve your problem, save whatever user data you need saving. Install Win XP, choose format ( NTFS, full ). Install Win 7 on top of it, choose "Advanced" not "Upgrade" ( your Win XP files will be saved in a folder called "win.old" ).
Download and update all the correct drivers.
Think twice before installing AVIRA, NOD32, AVAST, McAFEE. There is a free antivirus provided by the manufacturer of your OS, available at "http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/products/security-essentials".
Use "Defrag" from time to time.

Originally posted by Skywatcher2011
reply to post by winofiend

 

How can you be so sure about it being the HDD? I haven't seen anything about that online..

edit on 26-9-2012 by Skywatcher2011 because: (no reason given)

NTFS.sys is the file that interprets the data on the hard drive.

NTFS is the file system used by Windows.

Your hard drive is corrupt / dead.
Best bet? Take it out of that PC, scan it in someone else's PC. If you're lucky, it's fixable. If you're not, you need a new HDD.

reply to post by Skywatcher2011


Hi Skywatcher2011, this could be a couple of things. If you dont want to wipe off the entire system and start again (kind of a drastic measure) then only way to tell for sure what is causing the problem is to start diagnosing the problem step by step. It could be a faulty memory stick or even just a corrupt ntfs.sys file.

So its there's a very good chance its not a 'dead' hard drive.

The reasoning behind this is : The blue screen comes from the windows operating system itself so if the hard drive was 'dead' you would not be able to load up any windows instructions at all and you would not get a Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD). The system would just hang and you would get an error on a BLACK screen which would be from the bios.

There is a correct order of steps to take to get the diagnosis.

Someone here has suggested using a registry cleaner and i strongly advise against that until you have tried to find out what the problem is first. Using a registry cleaner sometimes can do more damage than the original problem.

First how far into the boot up process does the system hang or blue screen? Windows 7 has built in options for fixing some problems. You can get to them by continuously tapping F8 during the boot up process.

If you can not access the built in boot up options do you have a windows 7 installation disk? If you do then you can use this to diagnose and maybe even fix the problem. You boot off the installation disk and choosing 'repair' when given the option.

Using either of these 2 methods to get to the repair options I would suggest

1 - getting into the repair options choose an option to test your RAM memory.

2 - You can also try start up repair from this set of options.

3- If you still have no luck starting the system after this you can access the command prompt from the repair options and try to copy the ntfs.sys file from your installation DVD to C:WindowsSystem32drivers to replace the old one. Of course you might want to rename the old file to ntfs.old first.

There is a guide on how to do this here , its written for XP but the commands are the same in windows7 as well.

If you do not want to go the command liner route then you might want to try using some kind of boot disk like 'Hirens boot disk' or some kind of linux boot disk (im sure someone like ATS member Autowrench can suggest a good linux disk to use) to try to get access to your operating system and replace the old 'ntfs.sys' with one from the Windows 7 installation disk.

reply to post by winofiend

I will second the defective HDD, seen this plenty of times before. Swap in a known to be good one and try it.

reply to post by Skywatcher2011


Anyone who tells you that this is just caused a dead hard drive or that if another hard drive works ok the original problem must indicate a dead hard drive doesn't fully understand how windows works. Like you yourself said skywatcher most explanations to this problem online do not say its cause by a dead hard drive. There's to many people who are quick to just tell you to wipe off the system and start again. This should always be a last resort if you have a little time to try to fix the problem.

Swapping the hard drive for a new one and re-installing the system MIGHT fix the problem. But this does not mean the problem was the hard drive itself or could not be fixed without spending money on a new one.

I would try the less costly options first which are outlined in my post above

Heres an example where it was down to a faulty memory stick Windows 7 - BSoD with "STOP:0x00000024" error and "Ntfs.sys"

In this example the problem was a faulty NTFS.sys file and was fixed by running chkdsk /r which might be worth a try in your case and you can do from the command promt in the solutions i have outlined above. windows 7 BSOD after install

This one was solved by changing a bios setting Blue Screen error Stop: 0x00000024 [Solved/Closed]

So you have plenty of options as to what might be causing the problem. The black and white of it is that the system is having problems running the ntfs.sys file. The BSOD codes tell you what has happened inside the kernel.

Of course if you dont have the time to be diagnosing the problem and have another hard drive + the windows install disk you could try that route. You might even find that the original hard drive once re-formatted works perfectly well and can be used as a second data drive (which in itself would prove the drive is not dead)

Agree with Phoenix lots of things will cause a bsod with the ntfs kernel. Bios battery dying can cause this as HD and other settings get reset.